This was a year of national, European, and state-level elections in Austria — and it turned out disastrously for the Left. The surprise rise of the left-winger Andreas Babler to the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) in 2023 had fueled hopes of a left-wing turn in Austrian politics. But in parliamentary elections in September, the party instead experienced a marginal decline in its vote share compared to 2019. The Social Democrats only earned 21 percent — a particularly sobering result for a party that regularly received around half of the national vote in the 1960s and ’70s, and even maintained 35–40 percent in the 1990s and 2000s.
At the same time, the hard-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) celebrated a spectacular triumph, becoming the strongest party with 29 percent of the vote. This trend continued two months later in the elections in the southern state of Styria: the SPÖ dipped slightly to 21 percent, while the FPÖ more than doubled its vote to 35 percent, becoming the strongest party in this state for the first time ever.
Somehow things continued to get worse. After their election disaster, the Styrian Social Democrats decided to enter into coalition negotiations with the FPÖ in order to join the new state government, even though it meant governing as a junior partner to right-wing populists. As federal party leader, Babler stated that he was “not happy” about this, but that ultimately it was a matter for the Styrian state party association and so not his decision to make. This is a baffling position for a “left-wing beacon of hope” to take, especially considering that the former longtime SPÖ chairman Franz Vranitzky — hardly a “left-wing revolutionary” — had during his tenure categorically forbidden…
Auteur: Fabian Lehr
