| Election Name: | 2013 Lower Austrian state election |
| Country: | Lower Austria |
| Flag Year: | state |
| Type: | parliamentary |
| Ongoing: | no |
| Previous Election: | 2008 Lower Austrian state election |
| Previous Year: | 2008 |
| Next Election: | 2018 Lower Austrian state election |
| Next Year: | 2018 |
| Seats For Election: | All 56 seats in the Landtag of Lower Austria All 9 seats in the state government |
| Election Date: | 3 March 2013 |
| Turnout: | 975,746 (70.9%) 3.6% |
| Leader1: | Erwin Pröll |
| Party1: | Austrian People's Party |
| Last Election1: | 31 seats, 54.4% |
| Seats1: | 30 |
| Seat Change1: | 1 |
| Popular Vote1: | 495,557 |
| Percentage1: | 50.8% |
| Swing1: | 3.6% |
| Leader2: | Josef Leitner |
| Party2: | Social Democratic Party of Austria |
| Last Election2: | 15 seats, 25.5% |
| Seats2: | 13 |
| Seat Change2: | 2 |
| Popular Vote2: | 210,504 |
| Percentage2: | 21.6% |
| Swing2: | 3.9% |
| Leader3: | Frank Stronach |
| Party3: | Team Stronach |
| Last Election3: | Did not exist |
| Seats3: | 5 |
| Seat Change3: | 5 |
| Popular Vote3: | 96,016 |
| Percentage3: | 9.8% |
| Swing3: | New party |
| Leader4: | Barbara Rosenkranz |
| Party4: | Freedom Party of Austria |
| Last Election4: | 6 seats, 10.5% |
| Seats4: | 4 |
| Seat Change4: | 2 |
| Popular Vote4: | 80,122 |
| Percentage4: | 8.2% |
| Swing4: | 2.3% |
| Leader5: | Madeleine Petrovic |
| Leader Since5: | 2008 |
| Party5: | The Greens – The Green Alternative |
| Last Election5: | 4 seats, 6.9% |
| Seats5: | 4 |
| Seat Change5: | 0 |
| Popular Vote5: | 78,678 |
| Percentage5: | 8.1% |
| Swing5: | 1.2% |
| Map Size: | 300px |
| Governor | |
| Before Election: | Erwin Pröll |
| Before Party: | Austrian People's Party |
| After Election: | Erwin Pröll |
| After Party: | Austrian People's Party |
The 2013 Lower Austrian state election was held on 3 March 2013 to elect the members of the Landtag of Lower Austria.
The Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) retained its majority. The main winner of the election was the new Team Stronach, which debuted at 9.8%. It drew votes from the ÖVP, Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).[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 2008 election, the ÖVP had six councillors, the SPÖ two, and the FPÖ one.
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 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 | 2008 result | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes (%) | Seats | Councillors | |||||
| ÖVP | Austrian People's Party | Christian democracy | Erwin Pröll | 54.4% | |||
| SPÖ | Social Democratic Party of Austria | Social democracy | Josef Leitner | 25.5% | |||
| FPÖ | Freedom Party of Austria | Right-wing populism Euroscepticism | Barbara Rosenkranz | 10.5% | |||
| GRÜNE | The Greens – The Green Alternative | Green politics | Madeleine Petrovic | 6.9% | |||
In addition to the parties already represented in the Landtag, five parties collected enough signatures to be placed on the ballot.[3]
| align=center colspan=9 | |||||||||
| Party | Votes | % | +/− | Seats | +/− | +/− | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bgcolor= | Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) | 495,557 | 50.79 | –3.60 | 30 | –1 | 6 | ±0 | |
| bgcolor= | Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) | 210,504 | 21.57 | –3.94 | 13 | –2 | 2 | ±0 | |
| bgcolor= | Team Stronach (FRANK) | 90,016 | 9.84 | New | 5 | New | 1 | New | |
| bgcolor= | Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) | 80,122 | 8.21 | –2.26 | 4 | –2 | 0 | –1 | |
| bgcolor= | The Greens – The Green Alternative (GRÜNE) | 78,678 | 8.06 | +1.15 | 4 | ±0 | 0 | ±0 | |
| bgcolor= | Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) | 7,559 | 0.77 | –0.09 | 0 | ±0 | 0 | ±0 | |
| The Brave Citizens (MUT) | 5,968 | 0.61 | New | 0 | New | 0 | New | ||
| bgcolor= | Christian Party of Austria – Centre Party (CPÖMP) | 841 | 0.09 | –0.75 | 0 | ±0 | 0 | ±0 | |
| Pirate Party of Austria (PIRAT) | 501 | 0.05 | +0.05 | 0 | ±0 | 0 | ±0 | ||
| Invalid/blank votes | 19,527 | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| Total | 995,273 | 100 | – | 56 | 0 | 9 | 0 | ||
| align=left colspan=2 | Registered voters/turnout | 1,404,454 | 70.87 | –3.64 | – | – | – | – | |
| align=left colspan=9 | Source: Lower Austrian Government | ||||||||
| Constituency | ÖVP | SPÖ | FRANK | FPÖ | Grüne | Others | Total seats | Turnout | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | class=unsortable | class=unsortable | % | |||||
| 53.5 | 2 | 20.2 | 1 | 9.0 | 7.9 | 7.6 | 1.8 | 3 | 74.6 | ||||||||||||
| 42.9 | 1 | 22.6 | 1 | 14.4 | 8.9 | 9.4 | 1.9 | 2 | 67.0 | ||||||||||||
| 50.2 | 23.7 | 10.9 | 8.1 | 5.7 | 1.4 | 0 | 69.1 | ||||||||||||||
| 46.8 | 1 | 25.8 | 10.7 | 8.9 | 6.2 | 1.6 | 1 | 67.3 | |||||||||||||
| 50.5 | 28.1 | 9.0 | 6.7 | 4.9 | 0.9 | 0 | 75.3 | ||||||||||||||
| 58.1 | 1 | 20.3 | 7.9 | 7.0 | 5.3 | 1.4 | 1 | 74.5 | |||||||||||||
| 64.1 | 15.6 | 6.7 | 7.4 | 5.8 | 0.5 | 0 | 76.3 | ||||||||||||||
| 51.1 | 1 | 18.1 | 10.1 | 8.0 | 11.0 | 1.8 | 1 | 69.8 | |||||||||||||
| 56.1 | 1 | 19.1 | 7.8 | 7.6 | 7.4 | 1.9 | 1 | 74.5 | |||||||||||||
| 49.1 | 27.4 | 8.9 | 7.7 | 5.9 | 1.0 | 0 | 76.3 | ||||||||||||||
| 51.8 | 1 | 22.6 | 8.1 | 9.3 | 6.3 | 1.8 | 1 | 76.6 | |||||||||||||
| 57.3 | 2 | 19.1 | 8.4 | 7.8 | 6.8 | 0.7 | 2 | 74.0 | |||||||||||||
| 45.3 | 2 | 18.6 | 11.9 | 7.2 | 14.8 | 2.2 | 2 | 65.7 | |||||||||||||
| 48.0 | 1 | 26.0 | 9.6 | 8.6 | 6.3 | 1.6 | 1 | 70.5 | |||||||||||||
| 47.4 | 2 | 24.3 | 1 | 9.5 | 8.6 | 8.4 | 1.9 | 3 | 71.7 | ||||||||||||
| 55.8 | 1 | 21.6 | 7.4 | 7.3 | 5.5 | 2.4 | 1 | 77.0 | |||||||||||||
| 53.8 | 1 | 18.4 | 9.6 | 8.1 | 9.3 | 0.8 | 1 | 71.7 | |||||||||||||
| 56.8 | 18.6 | 8.1 | 10.6 | 5.9 | 0 | 74.7 | |||||||||||||||
| Vienna Surrounds | 43.4 | 1 | 21.9 | 11.9 | 8.5 | 13.0 | 1.3 | 1 | 62.1 | ||||||||||||
| 64.7 | 1 | 13.7 | 7.3 | 8.5 | 5.4 | 0.5 | 1 | 78.3 | |||||||||||||
| Remaining seats | 11 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 34 | |||||||||||||||
| Total | 50.8 | 30 | 21.6 | 13 | 9.8 | 5 | 8.2 | 4 | 8.1 | 4 | 1.5 | 56 | 70.9 | ||||||||
| 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 | 267,482 | 88.4 | ||
| bgcolor= | SPÖ | 1 | Josef Leitner | 39,706 | 61.0 | ||
| bgcolor= | FRANK | 1 | Frank Stronach | 29,728 | 83.5 | ||
| bgcolor= | FPÖ | 1 | Barbara Rosenkranz | 29,099 | 81.2 | ||
| bgcolor= | GRÜNE | 1 | Madeleine Petrovic | 19,690 | 67.8 | ||
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 4 | Stefan Pernkopf | 5,635 | 1.9 | ||
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 6 | Karl Wilfing | 4,579 | 1.5 | ||
| bgcolor= | ÖVP | 25 | Bettina Rausch | 3,118 | 1.0 | ||
| bgcolor= | SPÖ | 4 | Heidamaria Onodi | 2,747 | 4.2 | ||
| bgcolor= | FRANK | 2 | Ernest Gabmann Jr. | 2,778 | 7.8 | ||
The ÖVP retained its Landtag majority and six out of nine state councillors; the SPÖ also retained its two councillors. The FPÖ lost their sole state councillor to Team Stronach.