On April 27, early municipal and provincial elections will be held in Vienna. According to the federal structure of the state, Vienna has the status of a province. The city government decided to go on a political offensive in January in view of the looming possibility that the post of federal chancellor will be occupied by the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (AFP) and moved the election date forward by several months, BTA reports.
So far, sociological surveys show a stable lead for the Austrian Social Democratic Party (ASDP), which governs the city in coalition with the NEOS. According to the election trend of the Austrian news agency APA, the APS is making serious progress, but has no chance of taking first place.
The fight for third place between the candidates of the Austrian People's Party (AWP), the Greens and the NEOS, who have ambitions to govern in a coalition with the SPD, is shaping up to be a contested one.
The SPD's stable lead of 38.9 percent means that almost nothing has changed in the polls since mid-January. Mayor Michael Ludwig's party (SPD) achieved 41.6 percent in the 2020 elections, but last summer it collapsed in the polls to just under 35 percent. The APS has lost slightly compared to the beginning of April and is now at 21.7 percent. However, this result would mean a huge increase of 14.5 percent for the APS compared to 2020. But this will not be the best historical result for the APS: former party leader Heinz-Christian Strache achieved 30.79 percent in the 2015 elections.
This time, Strache, who is running with the party “Team HK Strache“ (Hans Christian Strache - ed.) collected around two percent of the vote and will probably not be able to enter the municipal council, as in 2020. The small party is not included in the APA's election trend, which is limited to parties that have achieved four percent or more in at least one sociological survey in the last 52 weeks.
The Greens are still in the lead in the race for third place. Since January, they have remained stable at around 12 percent. They are closely followed by the ANP, which has recently seen a slight increase and currently has 11.2 percent. However, this will not change the fact that the Vienna ANP will have to accept large losses compared to the 2020 elections. As things stand, this would mean a drop of 9.2 percent.
The NEOS is still in fifth place, currently with 9.3 percent, which is 1.8 percent more than in the last election. The Austrian Communist Party (AKP), which is participating in the elections, has little chance of entering the municipal council: with 3.7 percent, the party is well below the required five percent threshold.