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Election campaign manager Barbara Novak (l-r), Mayor Michael Ludwig and club leader Josef Taucher (all SPÖ), on the occasion of the Vienna elections. Photo: Helmut Fohringer/APA/dpa
Keystone
According to projections, Mayor Michael Ludwig's Social Democrats (SPÖ) have defended first place in the state elections in Austria's capital Vienna - despite strong gains by the right-wing FPÖ. The Social Democrats won around 39 percent of the vote.
According to the projection, the FPÖ received around 21% of the vote - 13 percentage points more than in 2020, when the right-wing populists performed unusually poorly in the wake of the Ibiza scandal and related corruption allegations.
Former FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who was at the center of the scandal at the time, attempted another political comeback on Sunday with his own party. However, he only received 1 percent of the vote, as the projection commissioned by the ORF broadcaster and the APA press agency showed.
Migration, crime and education the election campaign topics
During the election campaign, the FPÖ focused on the high proportion of foreigners and the sharp rise in youth crime in Vienna - the second largest German-speaking city after Berlin. Ludwig, on the other hand, emphasized during the election campaign that the city of two million people is perceived internationally as one of the safest and most liveable metropolises. Nevertheless, the SPÖ lost 2 percentage points according to the forecast.
The projection, which shows a fluctuation margin of 1.8 percent, sees the Greens at around 15 percent. The liberal Neos party, which has governed with the SPÖ in Vienna in recent years, made slight gains and took around 10 percent of the vote. This puts them on a par with the conservative ÖVP, which fell by around 11 percentage points.
27.04.2025, 19:31
