Lower Austria election – The state elections continue in Carinthia and Salzburg
It is a similar starting position, but different from Lower Austria. While Lower Austria’s governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP) still had a razor-thin absolute majority behind her in the state elections on Sunday, Carinthia’s governor Peter Kaiser (SPÖ) with almost 48 percent of the votes has needed a coalition partner since the 2018 state elections. In the southernmost state, that was the ÖVP, the third strongest party with a good 15 percent of the vote. Carinthia is now the next federal state in the round of state elections in the first half of 2023 to vote. The election date is March 5th, followed by Salzburg on April 23rd.
Covered by the election dispute in Lower Austria, the election campaign has also started in Carinthia. The SPÖ relies entirely on Governor Kaiser, who is considered level-headed and undisputed internally. The Social Democrats are building on continuity and have issued the slogan: “Good things usually have to happen. Kaiser brought back the post of provincial governor for the SPÖ in the 2013 election after years of supremacy of the Freedom Party and the BZÖ. In 2018, the SPÖ was able to acquire more than ten percentage points with the now 64-year-old, who studied sociology and education.
For Kaiser, the result on March 5 should not only be an order to continue the work, but also a rejection of a “movement, all against the SPÖ”. Like Mikl-Leitner, the Carinthian SPÖ Heuer has calculated losses in the state elections: A four should be ahead of the SPÖ result. The SPÖ currently holds 18 of the 36th mandate in the state parliament, the FPÖ 9, the ÖVP 6 and the Carinthia team 3 mandates.
FPÖ as the first challenger
The first challenger is the FPÖ, which was able to gain 23 percent of the votes in the 2018 state elections in the state that has traditionally been particularly good for the blue party. The top candidate is Erwin Angerer (58), who has been a member of the FPÖ National Council since 2014 and is one of the deputies of FPÖ club chairman Herbert Kickl. Angerer, who has been the chairman of the Carinthian FPÖ since October 2021, has already laid claim to the office of provincial governor. Hopes are raised by the good performance of FPÖ candidate Walter Rosenkranz in the federal presidential election in October last year with just under 24 percent in Carinthia, while incumbent Alexander Van der Bellen remained well below the 50 percent mark there.
The ÖVP, as the third strongest party, is starting with the 39-year-old agricultural state councilor Martin Gruber. Since April 2018 he has been the chairman of the state ÖVP, which is one of the weakest ÖVP state organizations in the state and has struggled with internal turbulence several times in the past. The declared goal is to return to the coalition government. While for the ÖVP place one for the SPÖ with Kaiser is out of question, warnings are given of a red-blue coalition or a red-green coalition after the election, although the Greens are not currently represented in the state parliament. However, there was recently an open confrontation with the current coalition partner SPÖ, because the latter twice outvoted the ÖVP in the application for the takeover of Klagenfurt Airport by the public sector.
Team Carinthia in a special role
Team Carinthia, which is currently represented by three members of the state parliament, plays a special role. The top candidate and at the same time head and figurehead is the former SPÖ politician and parliamentarian Gerhard Köfer, who in 2021 succeeded in winning back the mayor’s chair in the district town of Spittal an der Drau. In 2013, the group with Köfer, still called Team Stronach, made it into the state parliament for the first time with 11.2 percent, in 2018 5.7 percent of the votes were enough for the re-entry. This year there are good chances of overcoming the five percent hurdle and an extension.
The starting position for the Greens in Carinthia is completely different. There was a bad setback in 2018: you were kicked out of the state parliament with only 3.1 percent. The hopes of the Greens are resting on Olga Voglauer, a member of the National Council. The Carinthian Slovene is an organic farmer and, like the Greens in other federal states, focuses entirely on energy transition and climate protection.
Carinthia is not only traditionally rocky ground for the Greens, but also for the Neos. On March 5, they will make an attempt for the well-known entry into the state parliament with top candidate Janos Juvan and the priorities education and performance.
In Salzburg, the future of a three-party coalition is at stake
After that there will be a short breather until the Salzburg elections on April 23, 2023. In Salzburg, Governor Wilfried Haslauer (ÖVP) has been at the head of a three-party coalition of ÖVP, Greens and Neos since 2018. After gaining 37.8 percent, the ÖVP holds first place, clearly ahead of the SPÖ with 20 percent, closely followed even then by the FPÖ with 18.8 percent. The Greens got 9.3 percent, the Neos 7.3 percent of the vote.