Austrian Elections
AS OF 2026-08-30 · 46 CONTESTS · legislative, 29 September 2024 · WIKIPEDIA, NATIONAL ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES
Next election · legislative, expected 2029 · Capital · Vienna in the metro rankings →
Where the chamber sits · 5.6 of 10, left to right, spread 1.9 →
Every Austrian national election from the Imperial Council of 1897 to the Nationalrat of 2024, and every direct presidential election since 1951: the multinational Reichsrat and its eleven languages, the three camps of the First Republic, the dictatorship that ended them, the Proporz decades when two parties took nine votes in ten, Haider, Ibiza, and the first FPÖ first place.
Nationalrat seats
183
92 for a majority
Elections since 1897
46
legislative and presidential
The two-party peak
94%
ÖVP and SPÖ combined, 1975
Parliamentary elections
Every Nationalrat election since the republic's first, newest first. The gap from 1930 to 1945 is Austrofascism and the Anschluss, and it is left visible.
The FPÖ first · 2024–
In September 2024 the Freedom Party came first in a Nationalrat election for the first time, and then could not form a government: coalition talks failed twice before the ÖVP, SPÖ and NEOS assembled a three-party majority to keep it out.
Five parties and an Ibiza video · 2006–2019
Grand coalitions returned without the grandeur: two parties that no longer commanded the country governing it jointly. Then Kurz took the ÖVP right, the FPÖ into coalition, and the whole thing collapsed in 2019 over a secretly filmed evening on Ibiza.
Austrian People's Party 71Social Democratic Party of Austria 40Freedom Party of Austria 31
Austrian People's Party 62Social Democratic Party of Austria 52Freedom Party of Austria 51
Social Democratic Party of Austria 52Austrian People's Party 47Freedom Party of Austria 40
Social Democratic Party of Austria 57Austrian People's Party 51Freedom Party of Austria 34
Social Democratic Party of Austria 68Austrian People's Party 66The Greens 21
The Haider years · 1986–2002
Jörg Haider took the Freedom Party from 5% to 27% and, in 2000, into government, which brought sanctions from the other fourteen EU members and a coalition that fell apart in Knittelfeld. In the same period the two big parties fell below 60% combined for the first time and the Greens arrived.
Austrian People's Party 79Social Democratic Party of Austria 69Freedom Party of Austria 18
Social Democratic Party of Austria 65Freedom Party of Austria 52Austrian People's Party 52
Social Democratic Party of Austria 71Austrian People's Party 52Freedom Party of Austria 41
Social Democratic Party of Austria 65Austrian People's Party 52Freedom Party of Austria 42
Socialist Party of Austria 80Austrian People's Party 60Freedom Party of Austria 33
Socialist Party of Austria 80Austrian People's Party 77Freedom Party of Austria 18
The Proporz republic · 1945–1983
Two parties, the conservative ÖVP and the socialist SPÖ, took over 90% of the vote between them for four decades and governed together for half of it, dividing the state between them post by post. Turnout ran above 90%. Kreisky's thirteen years gave the SPÖ the only absolute majorities in Austrian history.
Socialist Party of Austria 90Austrian People's Party 81Freedom Party of Austria 12
Social Democratic Party of Austria 95Austrian People's Party 77Freedom Party of Austria 11
Socialist Party of Austria 93Austrian People's Party 80Freedom Party of Austria 10
Socialist Party of Austria 93Austrian People's Party 80Freedom Party of Austria 10
Socialist Party of Austria 81Austrian People's Party 78Freedom Party of Austria 6
Austrian People's Party 85Socialist Party of Austria 74Freedom Party of Austria 6
Austrian People's Party 81Socialist Party of Austria 76Freedom Party of Austria 8
Austrian People's Party 79Socialist Party of Austria 78Freedom Party of Austria 8
Austrian People's Party 82Socialist Party of Austria 74Freedom Party of Austria 6
Austrian People's Party 74Socialist Party of Austria 73Electoral Party of Independents 14
Austrian People's Party 77Socialist Party of Austria 67Electoral Party of Independents 16
Austrian People's Party 85Socialist Party of Austria 76Communist Party of Austria 4
The First Republic · 1920–1930
Three camps, socialist, Christian-social and pan-German, each with its own newspapers, sports clubs and paramilitary wing, competing in elections nobody expected to reconcile them. They did not. The Christian Social bloc governed throughout, the Social Democrats held Vienna, and the republic ended in the civil war of 1934 and the Austrofascist state that followed.
Social Democratic Workers' Party 72Christian Social Party 66National Economy Bloc (GDVP–LB) 19
Unity List (CS–GDVP) 85Social Democratic Workers' Party 71Landbund for Austria 9
Christian Social Party 82Social Democratic Workers' Party 68Greater German People's Party–Landbund 10
Christian Social Party 85Social Democratic Workers' Party 69Greater German People's Party 21
The Imperial Council · 1897–1911
Before there was an Austria there was Cisleithania, the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary, and its House of Deputies is the direct ancestor of the Nationalrat. Its elections were fought in eleven languages. Deputies sat not by party but by club, and the clubs were national before they were ideological: a Poland Club, a Bohemian Club, a Ruthenian Association, an Italian Union. Until 1907 the franchise ran through curiae that weighted a landowner's vote many times a labourer's; the fifth curia added in 1896 gave every man a vote, and only a fraction of the weight. Universal and equal male suffrage arrived in 1907, whereupon the Christian Socials took 96 seats and the Social Democrats 50, and the chamber became so fragmented that it was adjourned more often than it sat. The last of these parliaments was still formally in being when the empire dissolved in 1918.
Deutscher Nationalverband 100Uniform Bohemian Club 84Christian Social Union 73
Christian Social Union 96Poland Club 55German National Association 51
Poland Club 65Bohemian Club 44Association of German People's Parties 42
Bohemian Club 60Poland Club 59Association of German People's Parties 41
Presidential elections
All fourteen direct presidential elections since 1951, newest first. Austria has elected its head of state by popular vote for longer than most republics in this atlas, and the office carries powers it has never used.
The modern presidency · 1998–
Green and independent candidates broke the two-party hold. The 2016 election ran to a runoff, was annulled by the Constitutional Court over the counting of postal votes, and was rerun; Van der Bellen beat the FPÖ's Hofer twice in one year.
The Waldheim affair · 1986–1992
Kurt Waldheim was elected in 1986 after his wartime service in the Wehrmacht surfaced mid-campaign, and spent his term barred from the United States. It was the moment Austria's account of itself as Hitler's first victim stopped being tenable.
The Second Republic · 1951–1986
Directly elected since 1951, and for thirty-five years a contest between the two governing parties that the SPÖ usually won. The office is powerful on paper, entitled to dismiss the chancellor, and was used carefully.
The long arc in charts
Hover any point for the exact figure.
Turnout since 1945
Above 90% into the 1980s, when voting felt like a duty and the two camps mobilised everyone they had. The decline tracks the decline of the camps themselves.
The two-party share
ÖVP plus SPÖ, from 94% in 1975 to under 55% today. This one line is the story of Austrian politics.
Records & superlatives
How Austriaian elections work
The chamber before the republic
Austria's parliament did not begin in 1920. The House of Deputies of the Cisleithanian Imperial Council is its direct ancestor, and the four elections here from 1897 to 1911 are listed for the same reason the German hub opens with the Frankfurt Parliament. Deputies sat by club rather than by party, and the clubs were national first: a Poland Club, a Bohemian Club, a Ruthenian Association.
Proportional representation, three tiers
Seats are allocated in 39 regional districts, then nine states, then nationally, so the final result is close to the national vote. A party needs 4% nationally or one regional seat to take part at all.
The Proporz
For decades the two big parties divided not just the cabinet but the state banks, the broadcaster and the schools inspectorate between them, in proportion to their votes. It produced extraordinary stability and the resentment the Freedom Party later ran on.
A president with real powers
The Austrian president can dismiss the chancellor and dissolve the National Council, powers modelled on Weimar and deliberately left in place. They have never been used against a sitting government, which is the point Austrians make about them.
The election that was annulled
The 2016 presidential runoff was voided by the Constitutional Court over irregularities in how postal votes were counted, then rerun in December. Van der Bellen won both times, by more the second time.