Next Viennese state election

The next Viennese state election is scheduled to be held in the Austrian state of Vienna in the autumn of 2025. However, an earlier election after a premature dissolution of the Gemeinderat and Landtag is possible.

Background
In the 2020 state election, the SPÖ under mayor Michael Ludwig was able to improve its 2015 result after the downward trend of the last elections and again became the strongest party with 41.6%. The Greens under Birgit Hebein also improved and achieved their best result so far in Vienna with 14.8%. The NEOS party under Christoph Wiederkehr also recorded small gains and reached 7.5%. After suffering its worst result ever in 2015, the ÖVP was now able to more than double its share of the vote and received 20.4% of the vote; the party leader was former Federal Finance Minister Gernot Blümel. The FPÖ under Dominik Nepp lost more than two thirds of its vote share and reached 7.1%, its worst result since the state and municipal elections in 1983. The newly founded Team HC Strache – Alliance for Austria received 3.3% of the vote, which was below the electoral threshold, and thus failed to get any seats, as did the small parties LINKS with 2.1%, the Beer Party with 1.8%, and SÖZ with 1.2%. Other small parties played no significant role.

In 2020, a total of 1,133,010 people were eligible to vote, of whom 597,027 were women and 535,983 men. Voter turnout fell sharply to 65.27%, but this was still a higher turnout than in the 2005 state election, which had the lowest voter turnout to date with 60.81%. The share of postal votes reached a new high of 28.34% in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

After exploratory talks between the mayoral party SPÖ with the ÖVP, the Greens and NEOS, the SPÖ surprisingly decided to start coalition negotiations with the NEOS instead of the previous coalition partner, the Greens. A coalition with the ÖVP was rejected due to little agreement on topics. A coalition with the FPÖ was rejected outright by the SPÖ.

On 16 November 2020, the first contents of the new coalition agreement were presented. On 24 November 2020, Michael Ludwig (SPÖ) was re-elected as mayor with 60 out of 100 votes – 54 of them from the new coalition – and the new city government was sworn in by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen.

A 5% threshold applies to state and municipal elections in Vienna. In the past, the NEOS have campaigned for lowering it to 3%.