Speculations about an advancement of the Vienna City Council election from autumn to spring of the coming year have to do with growing nervousness among Social Democratic functionaries: From election to election, the Freedom Party seems to be gaining more and more strength. In Styria, they have recently doubled their share of the vote and reached 35 percent. In the future, they will provide the governor, while comrades will have to take a seat on the opposition bench.
Under the leadership of Mayor Michael Ludwig in Vienna, they may be far from such a fate. However, the general shift to the right, which is less pronounced in cities than in the countryside, must also be taken seriously by them. More and more people fear that conditions will worsen for them. This puts pressure on the SPÖ: It has stood for social advancement and improvement for decades. It can no longer offer that. More importantly: Herbert Kickl (FPÖ) is better at conveying the impression that he understands the worries and hardships. His party friends benefit from this nationwide.
Apart from that, it is initially expected that a turquoise-red-pink federal government will be formed. From a Social Democratic point of view, however, the signs for this are devastating: The negotiators have so far failed to create any mood in their favour. On the contrary, hardly anyone expects great things from them. A "millionaire's tax" or a reduction in working hours, as demanded by SPÖ leader Andreas Babler, does not seem enforceable. Rather, due to the budget crisis, which is mainly the responsibility of the ÖVP as the long-standing finance minister party, there will be unpopular austerity measures.
All in all, the cabinet of Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) including Vice Chancellor Babler will start with a disadvantage. Turning this around and gaining greater approval among the electorate will be difficult: If it can be achieved at all, it will not be a matter of months, but years.
In other words: The circumstances under which the SPÖ in Vienna has to fight the 2025 city council election are extremely adverse for it from today's perspective. It must expect significant losses, especially since it was only able to gain a meagre two percentage points in 2020, although the Freedom Party plummeted by almost 24 percentage points.
Michael Ludwig's party has held 41.6 percent since then. That is a lot on the one hand. However, if it drops to significantly less than 40 percent, it could become difficult for it to form a coalition with just a small party (currently Neos). Then it needs Neos and the Greens for this, would have to give up a lot of power and control and fear that there will be a government routine full of disputes.
Johannes Huber runs the blog dieSubstanz.at – Analyses and backgrounds on politics
This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.