Elections in Austria

On the federal level, there are two main elections in Austria: presidential elections and elections to determine the composition of the National Council (Nationalrat), the lower house of Austria's bicameral Parliament. The upper house, the Federal Council consists of delegates from the states and is not directly elected. These elections are governed by federal law, which also applies to European Parliament elections in Austria.

Austria's federal president (Bundespraesident) is elected for a six-year term, most recently in 2022 Austrian presidential election. The election takes place under the two-round system to ensure that the president is supported by a majority of the voters. Under this system, a first round of voting is held, and unless one candidate gets a majority there, a second round is held where only the two highest-ranking candidates from the first round are included.

The National Council is elected by proportional representation. Elections takes place every five years, except that a snap election may be called if the chancellor wants early elections or loses the support of a majority in the National Council, as happened in 2017 and again in 2019.

Austria has a multi-party system. From 1945 to 1986, Austrian politics had a two-party system, where two main parties, the SPÖ on the center-left and the ÖVP on the center-right, generally dominated politics. However, a third party would sometimes also win seats in the National Council. From 1986 onward a multi-party system has evolved, with no one party having enough support to hold a majority of seats in parliament, and the resultant need for alliances and power-sharing in a series of coalition governments. The two most recent coalition governments --- ÖVP & SPÖ and ÖVP & FPÖ—both failed. Following the 2019 National Council elections, in which its former coalition partners suffered heavy losses, the victorious ÖVP is now negotiating with the Green Party to form a third variant of a two-party coalition government; one for which examples so far only exists at the state level.

For a party to be represented in the National Council, it must either pass the threshold of at least 4% of all valid votes cast nationwide, or win one mandate (seat) in one of the regional electoral districts. If a party doesn't satisfy either requirement, it does not participate in the allocation of seats. This threshold exists to discourage parties from splintering and producing an unmanageably large number of small parties in parliament.

In some cases, a national referendum can be called by the Austrian Parliament.

In 2007, the voting age was lowered from 18 to 16 in all federal elections. Some states had already lowered the voting age for state and local election before 2007.