Changed the thread title as I don't think we need a new thread every year for Austria.
So, Austria now has a Conservative-Green government, and we'll see what that ends up looking like. In the national polls, the Greens and Conservatives are both continuing to do well, with the Greens polling in second in the averages above the SPO in the mid-teens, and the FPO sitting in an embarrassing (for the traditional third party) fourth place. NEOS are doing creditably too, hitting double figures, and the OVP Conservatives are still soaring ahead in the polls. It's the SPO and FPO who are doing badly compared to their historical positioning, especially the SPO who were once the major party of government right across Austria.
There is one bit of bright news for the SPO - Austria's easternmost, least populous state, Burgenland,
voted in its regional election today, and the SPO beat expectations, increasing their vote by about nine points from the previous election to achieve an overall majority of a couple of seats, a rare feat in Austria's proportional elections. Despite the Burgenland SPO having been in coalition with the far right, they did not lose votes to the Greens, who stayed fairly static, with a tiny increase for the Conservatives and a big drop for both the local Burgenland List and the far right FPO. NEOS generally failed to make headway. It's interesting how much this bucks the national trends - my impression as an activist is that it's now extremely tough to counteract national polling trends in e.g. the UK, not least because the local press is so weak and under-read, so it's interesting seeing the social democrats achieve it here.
In more concerning news for them, Lower Austria is having municipal elections and the SPO are apparently
struggling to find candidates in many areas. This is something I've noticed in the UK as well even more so - local government is seen as such an irrelevance in most areas that very few voters understand what it does and very few people are willing to stand for election to it. A friend of mine who's the only liberal councillor (and parliamentary spokesperson/candidate) in my home constiuency was saying to me recently that people in her ward (which she won from the Conservatives last year) simply don't know that they can come to her for help with council issues, or indeed what issues are council-level ones to start with. I don't know what one does about all that, and I guess that the looser nature of geographic community ties must weaken the extent to which people are willing to invest/engage with their municipal elected offices, but it does trouble me as a political problem.