2025 Burgenland state election

2025 Burgenland state election

19 January 2025
All 36 seats in the Landtag of Burgenland 19 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party   ÖVP Leader Hans Peter Doskozil Christian Sagartz Party SPÖ ÖVP Last election 19 seats, 49.9% 11 seats, 30.6%   Third party Fourth party   Grüne Leader Norbert Hofer Anja Haider-Wallner Party FPÖ Greens Last election 4 seats, 9.8% 2 seats, 6.7%
Governor before election Hans Peter Doskozil SPÖ Elected Governor TBD

The next state election in Burgenland is expected to take place in 19 January 2025. However, an earlier election after the premature dissolution of the state parliament is possible.

Background

In the 2020 state election, the SPÖ gained 8.0 percentage points to 49.9% of the vote and, with 19 out of 36 mandates, achieved an absolute majority for the first time since the 2010 state election, when it lost it. With 30.6%, the ÖVP came in second place. Despite an increase of about 1.5 percentage points, the vote share corresponded to its second-worst state election in Burgenland since 1945. This was followed by the FPÖ and the Greens with 9.8% and 6.7% respectively, with the FPÖ suffering losses of 5.3 percentage points and the Greens recording a slight increase of 0.3 percentage points – the best result in Burgenland state elections since the Greens first run. The NEOS and the alliance Liste Burgenland did not manage to enter or re-enter the state parliament with 1.7% and 1.3% respectively due to the barrier clause. For state elections in Burgenland, a 4% electoral threshold applies.

After the election, an SPÖ sole government was formed under Governor Hans-Peter Doskozil. It was confirmed on 17 February 2020 with 35 out of 36 votes, i.e. with votes from all parties represented in the newly elected Burgenland state parliament including one invalid vote.

In May 2024, the FPÖ state party executive committee initially elected Alexander Petschnig as FPÖ top candidate. However, in October 2024 the FPÖ state party executive committee agreed on Norbert Hofer as FPÖ top candidate. For the Greens, state spokeswoman Anja Haider-Wallner was elected top candidate. The ÖVP top candidate is Christian Sagartz.

Electoral system

The 36 seats of the Landtag of Burgenland are elected via open list proportional representation in a two-step process. The seats are distributed between seven multi-member constituencies, corresponding to the seven districts of Burgenland (the statutory cities of Eisenstadt and Rust are combined with Eisenstadt-Umgebung District). Apportionment of the seats is based on the results of the most recent census.

For parties to receive any representation in the Landtag, they must either win at least one seat in a constituency directly, or clear a 4 percent state-wide electoral threshold. Seats are distributed in constituencies according to the Hare quota, with any remaining seats allocated using the D'Hondt method at the state level, to ensure overall proportionality between a party's vote share and its share of seats.

In addition to voting for a political party, voters may cast preferential votes for specific candidates of that party, but are not required to do so. These additional votes do not affect the proportional allocation based on the vote for the party or list, but can change the rank order of candidates on a party's lists at the state and constituency level. Voters may cast one preferential vote at the state level, or three at the constituency level. A voter may not cross party-lines to cast a preference vote for a candidate of another party; such preference votes are invalid.

Opinion polls

Polling firm	Fieldwork date	Sample size	SPÖ	ÖVP	FPÖ	Grüne	NEOS	MFG	Others	Lead
Peter Hajek/SPÖ Burgenland	1–21 Apr 2022	600	53–55	22–24	9–11	5–7	2–4	3–5	–	31–33
Peter Hajek/SPÖ Burgenland	26 Nov–7 Dec 2020	503	53	23	9	8	3	4	–	11.0
Peter Hajek/SPÖ Burgenland	3–14 Sep 2020	600	51	25	14	7	2	1	–	8–12
Peter Hajek/SPÖ Burgenland	March 2020	–	51	29	9	8	–	3	–	17.0
2020 state election	26 Jan 2020	–	49.9	30.6	9.8	6.7	1.7	–	1.3	19.3