Socialists Easy Winners in Austrian Vote

The Austrian Socialist Party won an easy victory in general elections Sunday and appeared poised to retain the chancellor’s post, while a small right-wing party made dramatic gains at the expense of the Socialists’ conservative coalition partner.

Despite recent opinion polls showing the Socialists were losing popularity, the party won 81 seats, a net gain of one, to remain the largest faction in the 183-seat National Assembly, unofficial returns showed.

The big loser was the conservative People’s Party, the junior partner in the coalition government, which lost 17 of its 77 seats. The right-wing Freedom Party, running strongly on an anti-corruption, anti-big government platform, picked up 15 of those seats, nearly doubling its representation in Parliament.

“We’re losing our shirt and our pants,” a frustrated People’s Party official said as the results trickled in. It was the worst showing for the party since the restoration of the Austrian republic after World War II.

According to an Interior Ministry count released three hours after the polls closed at 5 p.m., the Socialists garnered 1,955,032 votes, or 43%, compared to 1,460,392 votes, or 32%, for the People’s Party, 754,379 votes, or 16.6%, for the Freedomites, and 205,821 votes, or 4.5%, for the environmentalist Greens Party.

About 83% of Austria’s 5.6 million eligible voters cast ballots, down from 90% in the last general elections in 1986, Interior Ministry officials said.

Broken down by mandate, the Socialists won 81 seats, the People’s Party 60, the Freedomites 33 and the Greens 9, a gain of one seat.

The Socialists and People’s Party have dominated Austrian politics since the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. Austria has had a Socialist chancellor since 1970, and the party has remained in government, either as a majority party or coalition partner, since 1971.

The Socialists-People’s coalition forged in 1986 was the first alliance by the two traditional parties since 1966. In 1983, the Socialists formed a coalition with the Freedom Party.

Pre-election opinion polls had projected that the two traditional parties would lose up to 10% of their combined strength to the Greens and Freedomites.

The Socialists’ stock has been gradually slipping as the result of a series of financial scandals that led to charges being brought against a former Socialist chancellor and other top officials.