Nowhere is it stated that the strongest party in the National Council is entitled to the Chancellery. Nevertheless, the first-place candidate has always chosen the Chancellor – with one exception: 25 years ago, Wolfgang Schüssel (ÖVP) secured third place with the help of the second-place FPÖ. At the state level, there have been several cases where a state governor came from the ranks of the second or third-placed party.
After the 23 National Council elections in the history of the Second Republic up to and including Sunday, the party with the largest mandate appointed the Chancellor 22 times. Twice – in 1953 and 1959 – the SPÖ ranked first in terms of vote share, but the ÖVP won more mandates due to electoral arithmetic. That is why the People’s Party also appointed the Chancellor. Only once has a chancellor been sworn in whose party was not the largest faction in the National Council.
The “reconnaissance mission”
The situation after the 1999 National Council elections was complicated: the SPÖ with the highest number of votes ruled out a coalition with the second-placed FPÖ, while the third-placed ÖVP decided to go into opposition. Federal President Thomas Klestil therefore invented the ‘exploratory order’. Initially, he instructed SPÖ leader Viktor Klima to explore the possibilities for government participation together with the other parties. It was not until 67 days after the elections that a formal order to form a government was issued. The subsequent coalition negotiations with the ÖVP failed, as did the attempts to establish an SPÖ minority government. 124 days after the elections, ÖVP leader Schüssel, who had already negotiated in parallel with the FPÖ, was sworn in as chancellor.
FPÖ leader Jörg Haider becomes governor of the state
Similar constellations in which the strongest party did not come into play have already occurred several times in the federal states. In Carinthia, the SPÖ twice came away empty-handed as first place. After the 1989 state elections, Jörg Haider, the head of the second strongest FPÖ, took over the seat of state governor with the help of the ÖVP. Two years later, Haider was voted out of parliament in a vote of no confidence by the SPÖ and ÖVP because of his statements about a ‘good employment policy’ during the Nazi era. His successor was Christof Zernatto of the ÖVP. After the 1994 elections, the first-placed SPÖ (37.37) and the third-placed ÖVP (23.79) agreed to re-elect Zernatto – to date the only state governor in Carinthia appointed by the ÖVP.
In Upper Austria it was also the SPÖ that was once ignored. In the 1967 elections, the Social Democrats finished just ahead of the ÖVP (45.21) with 45.95 percent, but the ÖVP again secured the seat of state governor for its long-term state leader Heinrich Gleißner through a pact with the Freedom Party.
The third state, where not everything always went according to custom, is Styria – but not against the wishes of the first place. After the 2015 state elections, in which the SPÖ was ahead of the ÖVP, state governor Franz Voves voluntarily handed over his office to his former deputy and ‘reform partner’ Hermann Schützenhöfer (ÖVP). In 1953 it was only thanks to electoral arithmetic that the SPÖ, although stronger in terms of votes, failed to wrest the state governor from the ÖVP, which had a greater number of mandates.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
