With five months to go until Austria’s parliamentary vote on 29 September, poll-of-polls data point to a knife-edge contest that could yet produce the EU’s next populist government—or keep the centre-right in office by a single seat.
The ruling ÖVP, scarred by a string of corruption probes and Ibiza-style scandals, has slipped to 27 %, down nine points from 2019 but still one point ahead of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) on 26 %. The centre-left SPÖ languishes at 21 %, while the Greens and liberal NEOS hover either side of the 10 % threshold.
Seat projections from the SORA institute show the ÖVP winning 51 of 183 mandates, the FPÖ 49, SPÖ 39, Greens 18 and NEOS 17. Under Austria’s three-tiered federal system, 92 seats are required for an absolute majority. The arithmetic is brutal: only two ideologically compatible paths exist—either a renewed ÖVP–Greens coalition (69 seats, 23 short) or an unprecedented FPÖ–SPÖ alliance that both parties publicly rule out.
The wild card is voter mobility. 36 % of respondents told the latest OGM survey they may still switch parties, the highest share since 2002. Pollster Markus Kessel predicts “a 3 % late swing either way, enough to flip five districts in Upper Austria and two in Styria—exactly the margins that decide who supplies the chancellor.”
Betting markets on 20 May priced an ÖVP-led government at 1.75 odds, the FPÖ at 2.40, implying a 57 % probability the conservatives cling on. Yet if the FPÖ finishes first—even by a single point—expect weeks of brinkmanship: President Van der Bellen has signalled he will not automatically appoint the top-voted party, citing “constitutional loyalty” clauses that could bar a ministerial coalition including the FPÖ’s hard-line Herbert Kickl.
Bottom line: Austria is heading for its tightest election in living memory, with the difference between a centrist minority government and a populist experiment resting on fewer than 15,000 ballots scattered across rural Salzburg and the industrial arteries of northern Graz.
