VIENNA (AFP) — Austria's two ruling parties, the Social Democrats and conservatives, received a severe drubbing in a snap general election here Sunday, which was marked by a resurgence of the far-right.
As of 7:00 pm (1700 GMT), two hours after the polls closed, the interior ministry calculated that the Social Democrat SPOe managed to hold on to first place, garnering 29.9 percent of votes.
But the reading represented a drop of 5.4 percentage points from the previous election in October 2006 and was the SPOe's lowest score since the end of World War II.
The conservative OeVP's losses were even more dramatic, plummeting 8.3 percentage points to 26.0 percent.
Both parties lost votes to the far-right FPOe and BZOe parties, with the Freedom Party (FPOe) under Heinz-Christian Strache seeing its vote-share surge by 7.1 percent to 18.1 percent while Joerg Haider's Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZOe) saw its score more than double to 9.8 percent.
The Greens slipped slightly to 9.9 percent.
The estimate was made on the basis of 81.4 percent of votes cast.
Turnout at 78.5 percent was the same as in the last election in October 2006. Some 6.1 million Austrians were entitled to vote.
Of the 183 parliamentary seats, the Social Democrats would hold 59, the conservatives 51, the Strache's Freedom Party 35 and both Haider's BZOe and the Greens would hold 19 seats apiece, the ministry calculated.
Observers said the clear swing to the right stemmed from voter dissatisfaction with the constant bickering and political in-fighting that characterised the outgoing "grand" coalition.
Under Social Democrat Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, the two parties seemed incapable of passing legislation on even the simplest projects.
By contrast, the last week of campaigning was marked by a marathon parliament session last Wednesday, in which parties mixed and matched in various unconventional alliances to approve a flurry of new legislation on anti-inflationary measures, family aid, pensions and the abolition of university tuition fees.
Forming a new government could prove extremely difficult.
A repetition of the left-right coalition of Social Democrats and conservatives seems the most likely solution, but both sides will have to ensure that political paralysis is not allowed to return.
The SPOe has elected a new leader, Werner Faymann, to replace the luckless and ineffectual Gusenbauer.
The perpetually smiling Faymann, 48, has consistently led the conservatives' much less charismatic Wilhelm Molterer in the popularity polls.
Molterer, 53, was deputy chancellor and finance minister in the outgoing administration and he was the one who called the early election, throwing in the towel with the remark "enough is enough."
In an initial reaction to the results on Sunday, Molterer described his party's performance as a "painful and dramatic defeat."
"It's not only a clear defeat for us in the Austria People's Party (OeVP), it's also a clear defeat for the way policy was made in Austria by two parties," he said.
For his part, Faymann said: "I promise what we said before the vote is still valid after the vote."
And he promised to win back voters who didn't vote Social Democrat this time.
"Positive work as was shown in parliament shortly before the vote, with concrete decisions, is the way of the future, instead of quarrelling," he said.
Despite his party's disastrous showing, the head of the conservative OeVP's election campaign, party secretary Hannes Missethon, dismissed suggestions that its leader and candidate for chancellor, Molterer, would step down.
"He is and will remain the head of the OeVP," Missethon said.
Freedom Party secretary general Harald Vilimsky ruled out joining forces with the Haider's rival far-right Alliance, even though the two parties' combined score would put them in second place ahead of the conservatives on the ministry's estimates.
Vilimsky's preferred solution would be a coalition with the Social Democrats, even though the latter have ruled out any such combination.
Haider's BZOe said that Austria's political landscape had been indelibly altered by Sunday's election and that his party should no longer be treated as a pariah in Austrian politics.
Currently governor of Carinthia province, Haider declared his readiness to enter into negotiations to form a government.
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