WK election 2025

Low voter turnout: Will 30% be cracked?

38,670 votes can be cast in the WK election on March 12 and 13. Some companies can even vote more than once in the individual specialist groups.

(Bild: Evelyn Hronek)

Only in Vorarlberg and Vienna was voter turnout lower in the 2020 Chamber of Commerce elections. The 28.2% turnout raises doubts about the role of the social partner.

"We don't need to dream of a four or five at the top," says Chamber of Commerce President Jürgen Mandl, Wirtschaftsbund (ÖWB). "A voter turnout of over 30 percent would do us good, for a broad consensus."

All the top candidates answered questions in the podcast studio of the "Kärntner Krone". They all gave reasons for the low level of enthusiasm. "You really have to ask whether you still have the right to exist as an interest group," noted WK Vice President Günter Burger, Freiheitliche Wirtschaft (FW), critically.

Complex system, controversial result 
On March 12 and 13, 38,670 eligible voters in Carinthia will have the opportunity to cast their votes - some of them more than once if their company is a member of several trade groups. A fact that is also a source of criticism. "Of course, it would be interesting to see what the result would look like if every business had just one vote, even if there were more trades," explains WK Vice-President Fredy Trey, Social Democratic Business Association (SWV).

The result mentioned was rather distorted in 2020 by a special feature: in some specialist groups there were so-called "peace elections". "That sounds so wonderful - a compliment to PR. But what's behind it? In reality, it's a shuffling of a list of voters," criticizes Markus Ertel, top candidate of the Green Economy (GW). This is how the distortions came about, from which the FW and SWV in particular benefited - at the expense of the GW of UNOS.

Major shifts in the distribution of mandates
The ÖWB achieved 77.3 percent of the vote, the SWV 6.2 percent, the FW 7.5 percent, the GW 7.4 percent and the UNOS 0.9 percent. This would have put the Greens in third place, but then the seats were distributed.

Suddenly the ÖWB had 70.2 percent, the SWV 7.5 percent and the FW 12.2 percent of the seats - this meant that the presidium with Mandl, Burger and Trey was fixed, while the Greens only had 3.9 percent of the seats. And the UNOS received no seats at all. Their top candidate, Christian Weinhold, takes a differentiated view of the system: "This is really dramatic. The effectiveness is obviously not understood by those entitled to vote. Certainly also due to the many standard lists."

There is no "peace election" this year - so the distribution of mandates could better reflect the result. Perhaps that alone will be enough to break the 30 percent barrier...