| Election Name: | 2008 Lower Austrian state election |
| Country: | Lower Austria |
| Flag Year: | state |
| Type: | parliamentary |
| Ongoing: | no |
| Previous Election: | 2003 Lower Austrian state election |
| Previous Year: | 2003 |
| Next Election: | 2013 Lower Austrian state election |
| Next Year: | 2013 |
| Seats For Election: | All 56 seats in the Landtag of Lower Austria All 9 seats in the state government |
| Election Date: | 9 March 2008 |
| Turnout: | 1,033,695 (74.5%) 2.7% |
| Leader1: | Erwin Pröll |
| Party1: | Austrian People's Party |
| Last Election1: | 31 seats, 53.3% |
| Seats1: | 31 |
| Seat Change1: | 0 |
| Popular Vote1: | 549,510 |
| Percentage1: | 54.4% |
| Swing1: | 1.1% |
| Leader2: | Heidemaria Onodi |
| Party2: | Social Democratic Party of Austria |
| Last Election2: | 19 seats, 33.6% |
| Seats2: | 15 |
| Seat Change2: | 4 |
| Popular Vote2: | 257,770 |
| Percentage2: | 25.5% |
| Swing2: | 8.0% |
| Leader4: | Barbara Rosenkranz |
| Party4: | Freedom Party of Austria |
| Last Election4: | 2 seats, 4.5% |
| Seats4: | 6 |
| Seat Change4: | 4 |
| Popular Vote4: | 105,748 |
| Percentage4: | 10.5% |
| Swing4: | 6.0% |
| Leader5: | Madeleine Petrovic |
| Party5: | The Greens – The Green Alternative |
| Last Election5: | 4 seats, 7.2% |
| Seats5: | 4 |
| Seat Change5: | 0 |
| Popular Vote5: | 69,852 |
| Percentage5: | 6.9% |
| Swing5: | 0.3% |
| Governor | |
| Before Election: | Erwin Pröll |
| Before Party: | Austrian People's Party |
| After Election: | Erwin Pröll |
| After Party: | Austrian People's Party |
The 2008 Lower Austrian state election was held on 9 March 2008 to elect the members of the Landtag of Lower Austria.
The Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) retained its majority. The major opposition party, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), suffered substantial losses. The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) partially recovered from its 2003 losses, more than doubling its voteshare and tripling its number of seats.[1]
The Lower Austrian constitution mandates that cabinet positions in the state government (state councillors, German: Landesräten) be allocated between parties proportionally in accordance with the share of votes won by each; this is known as Proporz. As such, the government is a perpetual coalition of all parties that qualify for at least one state councillor. After the 2003 election, the ÖVP had six councillors and the SPÖ three.
The 56 seats of the Landtag of Lower Austria are elected via open list proportional representation in a two-step process. The seats are distributed between twenty-one multi-member constituencies. For parties to receive any representation in the Landtag, they must either win at least one seat in a constituency directly, or clear a 4 percent state-wide electoral threshold. Seats are distributed in constituencies according to the Hare quota, with any remaining seats allocated using the D'Hondt method at the state level, to ensure overall proportionality between a party's vote share and its share of seats.[2]
The table below lists parties represented in the previous Landtag.
| Name | Ideology | Leader | 2003 result | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes (%) | Seats | Councillors | |||||
| ÖVP | Austrian People's Party | Christian democracy | Erwin Pröll | 53.3% | |||
| SPÖ | Social Democratic Party of Austria | Social democracy | Heidemaria Onodi | 33.6% | |||
| GRÜNE | The Greens – The Green Alternative | Green politics | Madeleine Petrovic | 7.2% | |||
| FPÖ | Freedom Party of Austria | Right-wing populism Euroscepticism | Barbara Rosenkranz | 4.5% | |||
In addition to the parties already represented in the Landtag, five parties collected enough signatures to be placed on the ballot.[3]
| Party | Votes | % | +/− | Seats | +/− | +/− | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bgcolor= | Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) | 549,510 | 54.39 | +1.10 | 31 | ±0 | 6 | ±0 | |
| bgcolor= | Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) | 257,770 | 25.51 | –8.04 | 15 | –4 | 2 | –1 | |
| bgcolor= | Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) | 105,748 | 10.47 | +5.98 | 6 | +4 | 1 | +1 | |
| bgcolor= | The Greens – The Green Alternative (GRÜNE) | 69,852 | 6.91 | –0.31 | 4 | ±0 | 0 | ±0 | |
| bgcolor= | Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) | 8,661 | 0.86 | +0.09 | 0 | ±0 | 0 | ±0 | |
| bgcolor= | The Christians (DCP) | 8,537 | 0.84 | New | 0 | New | 0 | New | |
| bgcolor= | Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) | 7,250 | 0.72 | New | 0 | New | 0 | New | |
| List for our Lower Austria (LNÖ) | 2,174 | 0.22 | New | 0 | New | 0 | New | ||
| Animal Rights Party (TRP) | 854 | 0.08 | New | 0 | New | 0 | New | ||
| Invalid/blank votes | 23,339 | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| Total | 1,033,695 | 100 | – | 56 | 0 | 9 | 0 | ||
| align=left colspan=2 | Registered voters/turnout | 1,387,368 | 74.51 | +2.72 | – | – | – | – | |
| align=left colspan=9 | Source: Lower Austrian Government | ||||||||
| Constituency | ÖVP | SPÖ | FPÖ | Grüne | Others | Total seats | Turnout | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | ||||
| 58.6 | 3 | 22.7 | 1 | 10.1 | 6.0 | 2.6 | 4 | 79.1 | |||||||||
| 47.2 | 2 | 29.1 | 1 | 12.8 | 7.9 | 3.0 | 3 | 70.2 | |||||||||
| 51.2 | 30.7 | 10.7 | 5.7 | 1.7 | 0 | 72.6 | |||||||||||
| 47.9 | 1 | 30.9 | 1 | 12.1 | 5.9 | 3.2 | 2 | 71.3 | |||||||||
| 54.1 | 31.1 | 8.1 | 4.3 | 2.4 | 0 | 77.9 | |||||||||||
| 60.7 | 1 | 23.5 | 8.5 | 5.3 | 2.1 | 1 | 77.8 | ||||||||||
| 68.6 | 1 | 18.1 | 6.4 | 4.8 | 2.0 | 1 | 79.2 | ||||||||||
| 56.0 | 1 | 22.0 | 10.8 | 8.7 | 2.5 | 1 | 73.0 | ||||||||||
| 60.5 | 2 | 21.2 | 8.9 | 6.2 | 3.2 | 2 | 76.9 | ||||||||||
| 51.2 | 32.2 | 9.6 | 4.7 | 2.3 | 0 | 79.5 | |||||||||||
| 55.1 | 1 | 26.0 | 11.0 | 5.3 | 2.7 | 1 | 80.2 | ||||||||||
| 60.5 | 2 | 22.4 | 9.5 | 5.5 | 2.2 | 2 | 78.0 | ||||||||||
| 52.0 | 2 | 21.5 | 9.4 | 12.9 | 4.3 | 2 | 68.3 | ||||||||||
| 49.4 | 1 | 30.8 | 1 | 11.7 | 5.7 | 2.4 | 2 | 75.2 | |||||||||
| 49.4 | 2 | 28.4 | 1 | 11.6 | 7.4 | 3.2 | 3 | 75.6 | |||||||||
| 60.9 | 1 | 21.9 | 8.9 | 5.9 | 2.4 | 1 | 80.5 | ||||||||||
| 58.4 | 1 | 22.4 | 9.7 | 7.1 | 2.3 | 1 | 75.7 | ||||||||||
| 63.1 | 20.7 | 10.2 | 4.6 | 1.4 | 0 | 78.0 | |||||||||||
| 50.5 | 2 | 29.0 | 1 | 12.0 | 5.7 | 2.7 | 3 | 71.9 | |||||||||
| Vienna Surrounds | 46.9 | 2 | 27.5 | 1 | 11.4 | 11.6 | 2.7 | 3 | 65.3 | ||||||||
| 70.0 | 1 | 15.6 | 7.8 | 4.5 | 2.2 | 1 | 81.9 | ||||||||||
| Remaining seats | 5 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 23 | ||||||||||||
| Total | 54.4 | 31 | 25.5 | 15 | 10.5 | 6 | 6.9 | 4 | 2.7 | 56 | 74.5 | ||||||
| Source: Lower Austrian Government | |||||||||||||||||
Alongside votes for a party, voters were able to cast a preferential votes for a candidate on the party list. The ten candidates with the most preferential votes were as follows:[4]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 1 | Erwin Pröll | 303,022 | 91.2 | ||
| bgcolor= | SPÖ | 1 | Heidemaria Onodi | 45,445 | 58.5 | ||
| bgcolor= | FPÖ | 1 | Barbara Rosenkranz | 45,371 | 86.8 | ||
| bgcolor= | GRÜNE | 1 | Madeleine Petrovic | 18,973 | 66.5 | ||
| bgcolor= | SPÖ | 2 | Emil Schabl | 4,131 | 5.3 | ||
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 3 | Wolfgang Sobotka | 3,961 | 1.2 | ||
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 4 | Josef Plank | 3,748 | 1.1 | ||
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 2 | Ernest Gabmann | 2,695 | 0.8 | ||
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 30 | Bettina Rausch | 2,441 | 0.7 | ||
| bgcolor= | SPÖ | 13 | Josef Jahrmann | 2,211 | 2.8 | ||