11h ago

Austria swears in centrist coalition without far right

www.dw.com Austria swears in centrist coalition without far right – DW – 03/03/2025

The winner of September elections, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), must now go into opposition after a long search for a viable coalition.

Summary

Austria’s new government, a centrist coalition of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), and the liberal NEOS, was sworn in on Monday.

This move keeps the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which won September’s election, out of power after it failed to secure coalition partners.

The new government, led by Chancellor Christian Stocker (ÖVP) and Vice Chancellor Andreas Babler (SPÖ), aims to tackle economic challenges and stricter migration policies.

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Great news. However, am I the only one annoyed by the phrase "winning an election", used three times in the article? I note that the author is from the UK and that phrase does make sense in their system. However, in most of Europe is it not weird or even uncommon that the party that gets the most votes and seats de facto lose the election and end up in opposition; as it's all about getting more than 50% of the parliament. Getting the most votes and seats is nothing more than nice statistics, if you can't get more than 50% behind you.
A more accurate text had been "FPÖ, despite getting the most seats in the parliament, are in the end in fact losers"
- Good point, and a great example of how assumptions about use of language can easily shape thoughts and opinions
- Yeah, I keep seeing that phrasing used everywhere and it bothers me, too. I'm pretty sure it's not accurate to the UK system either: they have a standard parliamentary setup like most of Europe where the party or coalition of parties who earn a majority of the seats is able to form government, which most people would consider to be what winning an election means. I'm not well-versed in the history of UK parliament, but it may just be that the situation has never occurred there, so they're unfamiliar with it?
  
  The UK's first-past-the-post electoral system usually ensures that one party wins more than 50% of seats, often without winning more than 50% of the votes.
  
  Should clarify that what I meant with it making sense in the UK is that their election system results in that the party that get most seats usually get over 50%, which means that "winning" and winning often become the same thing. Except 2017, when the Tories only lacked 5 seats to have over 50%, and 2010, when the Tories and LibDem were in a rare coalition, so do you have to go all the way back to 1974 to find another election where the party that "won" did not get over 50% and 1923 to find an election where the party that "won" de facto lost. Hence, I do understand the use of that language there, as it usually is relevant who "won".
  
  2010 was also exceptional because this was the most seats that the Lib Dems had won in a long time (possibly ever?), which, at the time, people speculated could be the end to the UK's defacto 2-party system (not counting the Scottish National Party (SNP)). Then the lib-dems squandered that good will and took 14 years to regain their footing. Fun fun fun.
  
  Coalitions and minority governments have happened in the UK too (e.g. early 2010s was a coalition between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats), but much more rarely than in a system with proportional representation (like Austria). Usually in the UK the party that gets the most votes does also get a majority of seats.

7 comments