Who makes chancellor?

Up to now, the strongest party has provided him

Andreas Babler (SPÖ), Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) and Herbert Kickl (FPÖ)

(Bild: APA/Erwin Scheriau/Helmut Fohringer/Max Slovencik, Krone KREATIV)

Nowhere is it stipulated that the strongest party in the National Council is entitled to the chancellorship. Nevertheless, the first-placed party has always provided the Federal Chancellor - with one exception: 25 years ago, Wolfgang Schüssel (ÖVP) secured the Chancellor's seat from third place with the help of the second-placed FPÖ. At provincial level, there have already been several occasions when a provincial governor has come from the ranks of the second or third-placed party.

After the 23 National Council elections in the history of the Second Republic up to Sunday, the party with the largest number of seats has held the office of Federal Chancellor 22 times. Twice - in 1953 and 1959 - the SPÖ came first in terms of share of the vote, but the ÖVP won more seats due to electoral arithmetic. This is why the People's Party also provided the Federal Chancellor each time. Only once before has a chancellor been inaugurated whose party did not have the largest parliamentary group in the National Council.

The "exploratory mandate"
 The situation after the 1999 National Council elections was tricky: the SPÖ, which had the most votes, ruled out a coalition with the FPÖ, which came second, while the ÖVP, which came third, decided to go into opposition. Federal President Thomas Klestil therefore invented the "exploratory mandate". He initially gave SPÖ leader Viktor Klima the task of sounding out the possibilities of government participation with the other parties. A formal mandate to form a government did not follow until 67 days after the election. The subsequent coalition negotiations with the ÖVP failed, as did efforts to form an SPÖ minority government. 124 days after the election, ÖVP leader Schüssel, who had already been negotiating with the FPÖ in parallel, was then sworn in as Chancellor.

FPÖ leader Jörg Haider becomes governor
Similar constellations, where the strongest party did not win, have already occurred several times in the federal states. In Carinthia, the SPÖ came out empty-handed twice as the first-placed party. After the 1989 state election, the leader of the second strongest FPÖ, Jörg Haider, snatched the state governor's seat with the help of the ÖVP. Two years later, Haider was voted out of office by a vote of no confidence by the SPÖ and ÖVP due to his comments about the "proper employment policy" during the Nazi era. His successor was Christof Zernatto from the ÖVP. After the 1994 election, the SPÖ (37.37), which came first again, and the ÖVP (23.79), which came third, agreed to re-elect Zernatto - the only governor in Carinthia to be appointed by the ÖVP to date.

In Upper Austria, the SPÖ was also bypassed once. In the 1967 election, the Social Democrats finished just ahead of the ÖVP (45.21%) with 45.95%, but the ÖVP once again secured the seat of provincial governor for its long-term provincial leader Heinrich Gleißner through a pact with the Freedom Party.

The third federal state where things did not always go according to plan was Styria - but not against the will of the first-ranked party. After the 2015 state elections, in which the SPÖ came out ahead of the ÖVP, Governor Franz Voves voluntarily handed over his office to his former deputy and "reform partner" Hermann Schützenhöfer (ÖVP). In 1953, it was only due to electoral arithmetic that the SPÖ, which had more votes than the ÖVP, was unable to wrest the governor's office from the ÖVP, which had more seats.