Austria’s two-party centrist coalition is expected to stay in power after elections Sunday, even though a record bad result may force them to find a third partner.
Having ruled the roost for decades, the Social Democrats (SPOe) and the conservative People’s Party (OeVP) look set to struggle to win a majority of votes and seats between them.
The latest polls put the SPOe on 27-28 per cent and the OeVP on 22-25 per cent, a far cry from scores well above 40 per cent and touching 50 per cent in decades gone by.
“This election will determine if the two parties currently in power will win a new mandate in the same coalition or if for the first time in Austrian history, a three-way coalition is necessary,” Marcelo Jenny, political scientist at Vienna University, told AFP.
Partly responsible is a string of recent corruption scandals pushing voters into the arms of several other parties, notably the ecologist Greens and the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).
This is despite Austria being largely sheltered from Europe’s financial woes under Chancellor Werner Faymann’s “grand coalition”, in office since 2008.
Austria remains one of Europe’s wealthiest countries with standards of living to match the stunning scenery.