Less than four weeks before the general election on September 29, Austria’s Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) is in crisis mode.
In late August a newspaper published an internal letter sent by party heavyweight Doris Bures to the SPÖ’s Presidium – a body comprising the party’s 11 most influential members.
In that, Bures – who is vice president of the Austrian Parliament – complained about the party’s electoral programme, insinuating that it lacked seriousness and undermined the credibility of the SPÖ.
The critique of the programme – which has so far not been officially published – was widely seen as a direct attack on the man responsible for it, Andreas Babler. He became the SPÖ’s leader in November 2023 and is its candidate for Federal Chancellor in the upcoming elections.
Babler, mayor of Traiskirchen, south of Vienna, and a self-declared Marxist, has steered the SPÖ further towards left-wing populism. His demands include rent control, a four-day workweek and a “basic income” for children of €400 per month paid by the State. He is also perceived as very lenient on asylum and migration.
Bures wrote that while many of the demands in the programme “sounded nice’” there was no way most of them would be put into practice. She further complained that the SPÖ’s claims that the programme had been adopted on a “broad internal democratic basis” were not true.
In the wake of the leak, Bures and Babler told Austrian media that they had talked their differences over but the letter revealed deep frictions that have plagued the SPÖ ever since it fell from power in the federal government seven years ago.
Babler narrowly won a contentious vote for the party leadership in 2023 against Hans Peter Doskozil, governor of the Burgenland region. As opposed to Babler’s pro-migration stance, Doskozil demanded a more migration-critical approach. He was first reported as the winner of the vote with 53 per cent, but the next day the SPÖ announced there had been an ‘Excel mixup’ and in fact Babler was the winner.
Insiders therefore assumed it was Doskozil who leaked the letter to the press, which damaged both Babler and his other internal rival Michael Ludwig, Mayor of Vienna, who was seen as the man behind Bures.
The letter affair is just one of several recent crises for the SPÖ. In late August, Klaus Luger, SPÖ mayor of Austria’s third-largest city Linz, had to resign from all offices after admitting that he secretly passed on interview questions to his favoured candidate for the artistic director of Linz’ main concert hall prior to the interview.
In the elections on September 29, the SPÖ is expected to perform poorly. The latest poll by OGM/Kurier puts it in third place, behind the Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the People’s Party (ÖVP), with only 21 per cent of the vote. In the last federal elections in 2019, the party received 21.2 per cent of the vote – its worst result ever.
