After the elections

Salzburg’s cities are now in red hands

Alexander Stangassinger (SPÖ) confidently defended his office in Hallein in the first ballot.(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

In eight out of eleven Salzburg municipalities, an SPÖ mayor is in power after the election. There is also a new record: for the first time, 14 women are at the head of a municipality.

There are exactly eleven towns in the province. Since Sunday, eight of these eleven have been in SPÖ hands, above all the provincial capital. New to the list are Neumarkt and St. Johann. The Reds won the mayoral seats in both municipalities from the ÖVP. Mittersill has a new mayor in Thomas Ellmauer, but he belongs to a list. Only Radstadt and Seekirchen remain in the black.

Including Sunday's election, the Reds gained five mayors compared to 2019, while the ÖVP lost nine. If you look at the changes in municipal leadership since election day five years ago, the ÖVP has lost as many as eleven mayors.

Salzburg's mayors after the 2024 election(Bild: Krone KREATIV)

In Bad Vigaun, Maria Alm and Forstau, list men will take office after the last election. Alongside Alexander Sartori in Bad Vigaun, Gregor Schwarz surprised everyone in Forstau.

Two blue village heads, 14 female mayors
The businessman from Lower Austria, who moved to Pongau 16 years ago, broke through the ÖVP's monopoly of the municipality with his "Forstau List". Since the beginning of statistics, Forstau has only had ÖVP mayors, and they have always been elected after just one ballot.

For the first time, there are two local leaders for the Freedom Party. In addition to Andreas Fanninger (Unternberg), the FPÖ has another mayor after the run-off election, Willi Bodner (Mühlbach/Hochkönig).

There are now 14 female mayors in the 119 municipalities in the province, which is a record. After the 2019 election, there were only eleven.