The current government is a coalition government of the conservative ÖVP and the Greens. (See party descriptions below.) Although it survived a full five-year term beginning 2019 which included the COVID crisis, it was always an uncomfortable partnership.
Austria’s election will be watched in particularly to see how the far-right party performs. It is currently leading in the polls. And it has the dubious distinction of having been a key trend-setter for the present type of far-right parties in the European Union, as described below.
The experience of the last two decades in countries including Britain, France, and Italy has shown that efforts by center-right conservative parties to pander to the far right by adopting their themes, especially xenophobia and Islamophobia, has the very heavy tendency to strengthen the far right, not the me-too versions presented by the center-right. That tendency has also been very evident in Austria.
Current polls tend to show the far-right FPÖ as the leading vote-getter, the center-right ÖVP as second, and the center-left SPÖ (which has become more assertively left recently) coming in third. The Green Party and the liberal NEOS are trailing them, with both likely to receive enough votes to be potential coalition partners.
Here is some background on the main three parties, with example of their current marketing.
Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP)
Austria’s Christian Democratic party is the People’s Party of Austria (ÖVP). It is the leading party in the current governing coalition with the ÖVP’s Kurt Nehammer as Chancellor. Nehammer has the kind of charisma one might expect from a health insurance rep who gets paid based on how many claims he denies. Nehammer is dedicated to delivering business lobbies as much of what they want as he can deliver in a country that has benefitted greatly from classic European social-democracy/welfare state policies.
The slogan in this campaign ad from the ÖVP website emphasizes “stability for Austria” and features Chancellor Nehammer without mentioning his ÖVP party.
Social Democratic Party (SPÖ)
The Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) is headed by Andi Babler, who became party chief in 2023 via internal SPÖ elections. He is a charismatic politician who conveys a convincing mixture of aspirational ideals and practical competence. His image could be reasonably compared to that of the US Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz. He has been the mayor of Traiskirchen since 2015, a city south of Vienna which houses the main processing center for refugees, which remains a controversial issue. His high popularity in Traiskirchen is a testament to his ability to be convincing to a broad constituency while defending a post-neoliberal social-democratic position. And he was mayor during the so-called “immigration crisis” of 2015-6.
Campaign ad from the SPÖ website featuring Babler: “All Chances for All Children”
Babler is a fresh face on the national scene but his party has tarnished its image as a left/center-left party in recent decades by its all-too-enthusiastic embrace of the post-1989 neoliberal consensus on economics and social policies. The state (regional) parties leaders have been grumping about Babler’s progressive approach and the party seems in many ways out of practice in mobilizing its voters.
But Babler is a talented politicians, and the election results could very well turn out more positively for the SPÖ than the current polls indicate.
Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ)
The FPÖ is Austria’s version of MAGA. The were basically formed by not-so-well-reconstructed former Nazis. The Austrian historian Margit Reiter has written a detailed account of its origins. (1) At times in its history, it flirted with respectability by elements of the party who pushed to make it into a classical-European liberal part, i.e., defending civil liberties and the rule of law while supporting “free-market, pro-business” economic policies. But the transformation never got very far. A charismatic leader named Jörg Haider took over the national party leadership in 1986 and became famous for nudge-nudge-wink-wink praise for the Third Reich while staying on the legal side of Germany’s anti-Nazi laws. Haider was an important figure in the postwar European right, representing a successful example of what was called “yuppie fascism.” Haider split from the FPÖ before his death in an automobile accident in 2008 without ever becoming a national government minister.
But he led the FPÖ to participation in a national ruling coalition in the 1999 election. The ÖVP agreed to form a coalition with the FPÖ as a junior party in the national government of 2000-2005. This is remembered as the first break in the postwar “firewall” against the far-right in European democratic government since the Second World War. That government basically followed the conservative brand of neoliberal economic policies and was a fairly unstable coalition. The ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz (who now works for TechBro fascist Peter Thiel) formed another ÖVP-FPÖ coalition that last from December of 2017 to May 2019 that governed chaotically before falling apart due to a scandal involving Haider’s successor as FPO leader, H.C. Strache.
The FPÖ’s current leader is Herbert Kickl, a former speechwriter for Haider who is a shrill rightwing demagogue like Haider and Strache. He served as Interior Minister (in charge of the police and internal security) in Kurz’s first government (2017-2019). His main accomplishment there was a bizarre raid he staged on his own government’s intelligence agency, whose main result was to damage its credibility badly with partner governments and seriously comprising its ability to detect actual terrorism threats, to the point where the agency had to be formally abolished and reconstituted. The Austrian President, Alexander Van Der Bellen, stated clearly he would never appoint Kickl as a national minister again. (1)
Other factors
Along with the Greens and the NEOS, there is a quirky libertarian-ish protest party called the Beer Party which could conceivably win a few parliamentary seats. The tiny Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) has attracted some deserved international attention (2) for strong showings in municipal elections in the cities of Graz and Salzburg, where they are part of the city government coalitions, with an approach emphasizing improved housing availability and affordability and old-fashioned grassroots party organizing. Their current approach could fairly be described as left-social-democratic. But the polling isn’t showing their chances to make it into the national Parliament this year as very promising.
The Ukraine war is also an important concern for Austrian voters but it hasn’t been a major theme. Austria is an officially militarily neutral country, though in practice it cooperates with NATO. It’s neutral status during the Cold War made it a center for international agencies and international conferences, a status that it maintains to a significant extent. In particular, Austria has maintained more-or-less-friendly relations with Russia – or at least non-hostile ones. And with tighter bank secrecy laws even more so than Switzerland, Austria has been an attractive site for Russian money laundering. It’s not unusual for some scandal involving Russian espionage or dubious Russian oligarch dealings to be knocking around in the Austrian news.
Austria officially opposes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that seems to be a popular position among the public. But Austria hasn’t been fully chaste in its continued use of Russian energy. (Open secret: The EU has a shared energy grid so if one country is getting energy resources from Russia, the whole EU is benefitting. But it’s not considered polite to mention in public very often.) However, Austria has accepted a significant number of Ukrainian refugees, who are classified technically in the EU as "displaced persons," which means they don't have to go through the asylum process and are immediately permitted to work in EU countries.
Notes:
(1) Reiter, Margit (2019): Die Ehemaligen. Der Nationalsozialismus und die Anfänge der FPÖ. Wien: Wallstein Verlag.
(2) Baltner, Adam (2024): Austria’s Communists Are Curbing the Far Right’s Rise. Jacobin 03.04.2024.
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