Vying for votes

EU election: This procedure makes Schilling tremble

Lena Schilling's campaign suffered a setback in the EU election campaign due to wild accusations.

(Bild: APA/MAX SLOVENCIK)

Preferential votes can also influence who gets a seat in the European Parliament after the EU elections. If a candidate's number of preferential votes exceeds a certain threshold, he or she may be entitled to the party's first mandate. Preferential votes could also play a role for the Greens, whose campaign has suffered a setback due to accusations against lead candidate Lena Schilling.

If he were to receive a large number of preference votes, he would "naturally" be available as head of delegation, said Thomas Waitz, list runner-up and co-chairman of the European Greens, on the ORF program "Hohes Haus" on Sunday. However, he does not want to run a preferential vote campaign and does not doubt Schilling's credibility.

Procedure regulated in election regulations
The procedure for preferential votes is regulated in the European electoral regulations. Unlike in other elections, there is only one constituency in the EU elections. This means that voters can only cast one preferential vote. The preferential vote does not apply if several candidates are named or if the candidate named belongs to a party other than the one ticked.

Due to wild accusations, Lena Schilling's campaign suffered a setback in the EU election campaign.

(Bild: APA/MAX SLOVENCIK)

Subsequently, there is a limit of five percent of the votes allocated to a party. If a candidate receives this number of preferential votes, they are ranked first. If the preferential votes of several people exceed this threshold, the ranking is based on the number of preferential votes.

No special ÖVP model 
The ÖVP adopted a special model in the last EU election in 2019. However, there will be no stricter rules for the election on June 9, a spokesperson confirmed. At that time, candidates were ranked purely according to their preferential votes.

115,906 preferential votes for Edtstadler
This led to a preferential vote campaign within the ÖVP. Karoline Edtstadler, who is now Minister for European Affairs and was second on the list at the time, ultimately received 115,906 preferential votes in 2019. Only Ursula Stenzel, former ZiB presenter, achieved more when she ran for the ÖVP in 1996 with 168,078. In 2019, Othmar Karas, then first on the list and currently First Vice-President of the European Parliament, received slightly fewer preferential votes than Edtstadler, who moved back to Austria after less than a year, with 103,035.

He therefore fell short of his own result from 2009 (112,954). At that time, he had run a personality campaign against former Interior Minister Ernst Strasser, who had been installed as leader by then party leader Josef Pröll. Following differences with his party, Karas is no longer running.

Karoline Edtstadler and Othmar Karas

(Bild: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)

In 2019, Andreas Schieder, who will once again lead the Social Democrats this year, received the most preferential votes for a candidate outside of the ÖVP with 72,863. Slightly fewer votes were received in 2019 by Green Party lead candidate Werner Kogler (70,821), who did not accept his mandate, FPÖ lead candidate Harald Vilimsky (64,525) and NEOS lead candidate Claudia Gamon (64,350). They each achieved the best preferential vote results of their parties.

The ÖVP model cost former ORF star Wolfram Pirchner (9,359 preferential votes) and Christian Sagartz from Burgenland (17,233) their seats in 2019. They were overtaken by the Lower Austrian farmers' ally Alexander Bernhuber (30,338) and the Tyrolean business ally Barbara Thaler (38,285).

Memories of an internal FPÖ duel in 2004
However, the legal threshold for preferential votes has only had an effect on the distribution of seats once before: in 2004, Andreas Mölzer, who was ranked third, took the only FPÖ seat away from the top candidate Hans Kronberger with 21,980 preferential votes, although seven percent of the party votes were still required at the time.