Municipal elections 2025

Where the FPÖ wants to be mayor soon

Provincial Managing Director Friedrich Scheer, Governor Mario Kunasek and Provincial Councillor Stefan Hermann

(Bild: FPÖ Steiermark)

Will the "blue wave" continue in the municipal elections? The FPÖ will be running in 91% of all municipalities on March 23 - in some of them, it believes it has a good chance of winning the mayor's seat. 

On March 23, the Styrian FPÖ will be running in more local council elections than ever before, in exactly 260 of the 284 municipalities (all except Graz). That is over 91 percent. Five years ago, there were candidates in around 82 percent of municipalities.

Kunasek, who himself was a local councillor for several years and then deputy mayor of his former home municipality of Gössendorf south of Graz: "It is one of the most beautiful, but also most difficult tasks in politics", because the effects are immediate. The aim for the elections is to be mayor or even mayoress in as many municipalities as possible this time. After all, of the 3198 candidates so far, 848 are women and 20 of them are even top candidates, emphasized Friedrich Scheer, the regional managing director. The deadline for further candidates runs until Friday.

Will there be blue mayors again?
Kunasek believes that the neo MP and former press spokesman Philipp Könighofer in Langenwang, Gerhard Hirschmann (Heiligenkreuz am Waasen), Patrick Derler (Birkfeld) and club chairman Marco Triller (Niklasdorf) have the best chances. Other municipalities in which the Freedom Party believes it has a good chance internally are Kalwang (where Klemens Draxl is currently the municipal treasurer), Stallhofen, Vasoldsberg, Semriach (in all three municipalities a Blue Party member is currently deputy mayor), St. Peter am Ottersbach and Bad Blumau.

In the towns of Leibnitz and Bruck, the FPÖ lead candidates Daniel Kos and Raphael Pensl are confidently calling themselves mayoral candidates. The FPÖ is also hoping for very good results in Fürstenfeld (Christian Schandor), Voitsberg (Markus Leinfellner) and Mürzzuschlag (Arnd Meißl).

Election 2020 brought high losses
The FPÖ is going into the election campaign "highly motivated" and hopes to take the momentum from the National Council and state parliament elections with it, according to Governor Kunasek, "but local council elections work according to their own rules". Decisions are based heavily on personalities. In any case, the targets are "higher than in 2020" - in the year following the Ibiza scandal, the FPÖ lost a significant 5.6 percentage points to 8.2 percent. Most recently, there was no local FPÖ leader.

The election campaign is being conducted in a way that conserves resources, according to provincial councillor Stefan Hermann. According to Scheer, the provincial party is contributing around 270,000 euros to the election campaign in the municipalities.