Parliamentary elections in Austria – Social Democrats remain stable, gains for right-wing parties

The SPÖ was able to win votes mostly from non-voters and former green voters, but mostly lost votes to the right-wing populist FPÖ. Overall, we see a shift of about 4% points from the left-wing parties to the right. The liberal NEOS, which cannot be attributed to either of the two camps, remained stable, while the Greens suffered heavy losses and remained below the 4% hurdle to enter the National Parliament. Even if this is hardly a landslide victory for the right-wing parties, there is still a clear shift to the right. In addition to the percentage movement in favour of the right-wing parties, a clear rhetorical and substantive reorientation of the ÖVP from being a classical conservative party to being a party with right-wing populist tendencies can also be observed. The programmes of the ÖVP and FPÖ extensively overlap.