After the FPÖ had been well ahead in the polls for a long time, things seemed to be getting tight again in the weeks before the election: the conservative ÖVP was gaining percentage point by percentage point, and the incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer stylized the election as a decision between him and Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ’s top candidate. Early on the evening of the election it was clear: his calculations had not worked out; the majority of Austrians voted for the Freedom Party.
More people took part in the election than five years ago. But neither Nehammer’s escalation nor the devastating flood two weeks ago were able to mobilize as many voters as at the turn of the millennium, when voter turnout was well over 80 percent several times. Inflation, immigration and health/care were the most discussed topics in the election campaign – not the causes and consequences of the flood disaster. Even among younger voters, environmental and climate protection only came in fifth place as the most important issues.
As in the past state elections in East Germany, it is the older people who are preventing the right-wing populists from making an even stronger showing. Among those over 60, the ÖVP is well ahead of the FPÖ and the Social Democrats led by Andreas Babler. Most younger voters cast their votes for the FPÖ, and the liberal Neos also did comparatively well here. If it were up to the 16 to 34 year olds, the beer party of the punk rock singer Dominik Wlazny and the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) would also have hopes of entering the National Council.
The FPÖ is roughly equal among women and men. This is not a given: In 2019, the FPÖ did only half as well among women as it did among men and a difference was also visible in the EU elections. In this election, the biggest gender differences lie in the results of the ÖVP and SPÖ, and even these are still just within the uncertainty range associated with the surveys.
Although Andreas Babler tried to position the SPÖ further to the left than his predecessors with his demand for a tax on the rich, he did not succeed in getting the workers behind him: around one in two people voted for the FPÖ – and the employees also voted the blue ones clearly ahead. Only self-employed people chose the ÖVP with a similar frequency.
If you look at formal education, there are big differences in voting behavior. The FPÖ has already been able to win over voters without a university entrance qualification in the past. Greens and Neos mainly reach those with a higher level of education. The Greens reached the National Council election 2019 almost a third of those with a high school diploma or higher – their voting results have almost halved in this group.
In order to determine which population groups voted for which party, the survey institutes conduct election surveys. To do this, they ask voters which party they intend to vote for and also record socio-demographic characteristics, such as age and profession. In Austria, 1,248 people were surveyed in telephone and online interviews between September 23rd and 28th. In order to achieve the most representative result possible, the survey institutes calculate the approximate share of votes of the important parties for each population group from their survey results.