Austria – Final Election Results

All the postal votes have been counted and the final, definitive result of the Austrian General Election[de] is in. The headline is that the Greens have narrowly pipped the FPÖ to third place, the first time ever that they’ve managed to be in that position.

• SPÖ – 35.3 % – 68 Seats
• ÖVP – 34.3% – 66 Seats
• Grüne – 11.1% – 21 Seats
• FPÖ – 11.0% – 21 Seats
• BZÖ – 4.1% – 7 Seats

The other effect of the postal ballots is that the vote gap between the SPÖ and the ÖVP has narrowed to just 1%, though their seat numbers stay the same. We’re still in the same position as a week ago in that the only two-party solution is a Grand Coalition and that may yet still not happen[de].

There was also the possibility of a legal(ish) challenge over whether the BZÖ technically fought the election as one party or two[de]. This was because the BZÖ in Carinithia fought under the banner of “Liste Haider” whereas in the rest of the country they were led by Westenthaler. Some (i.e. the FPO) argued that that means they technically constituted two seperate organisations, which means they should have been counted seperately, and that would have meant that each inidividual “party” wouldn’t have met the 4% barrier to enter Parliament on the PR count. That challenge however seems to have fizzled out leaving the above figures as the final result.