The mayor of Vienna, Social Democrat Michael Ludwig. Credit: Joe Klamar / AFP / Profimedia
Vienna, Michael Ludwig's exercise mayor, kept his center-left party in the municipal elections on Sunday in the Austrian capital, according to the projections based on the partial results, but the far right tripled and ranked second, reports AFP.
The projections show that the Social Democrats (SPI), who gave the mayor of Vienna without interruption in 1945, obtained over 39% of the votes, a lower score than the 2020, when he took 42%.
The Freedom Party (FPO) ranked in the second position, by about 20%, a significant increase in the 5% score of 2020, when facing a corruption scandal.
FPO won the national elections for the first year last year, obtaining about a third of the votes, but failed to draw a majority to govern.
SPI excludes the scenario of a majority with the far right
Ludwig (64 years old) excluded the possibility to form a majority in Vienna with FPO, who claims that the city has become uncertain and should not spend more money to support the integration of Syrians, Afghans and other asylum applicants.
They had the right to vote around 1.1 million people. More than one third of the 2 million inhabitants of Vienna do not have Austrian citizenship, and the number is increasing.
It is unclear who will try to form a majority for Ludwig's next term. In the last local government, the Social Democrats made a coalition with the Liberals from Neos.
The projections place them in the third position on the green, with a score of almost 15%, while Neos is at 10%, shoulder to shoulder with conservatives.
Conservatives, which at national level govern Austria along with SPI and Neos, decreased from about 20%, as they obtained in the local elections of 2020.
Ludwig put the positive result on the “very strong political continuity”. The weakest result of SPA was 39.5%, in 1996.
At the Sunday elections, the electorate was able to vote for the Local Council and for the mayors of the 23 districts of the city.
