At 76.37 percent, fewer Upper Austrians used their right to vote than ever before in the Second Republic. Nevertheless, the Upper Austrians remain model students in a comparison across Austria. Only a second federal state, Burgenland, also has a state parliament voter turnout of over 70 percent (exactly 74.94 percent there). Everything else has a six at the front, Tyrol is at the bottom with exactly 60.00 percent.
In Upper Austria, less than 80 percent of those entitled to vote have so far voted: in 2003, only 78.65 percent cast their vote. In 2009 and 2015 the participation increased again, to 81.63 percent most recently – this year to cut by 5.26 percentage points.
This year, probably in view of the pandemic, significantly more Upper Austrians applied for voting cards than six years ago: 241,033 of these were issued this year, compared to 132,000 in 2015. This was despite the fact that the state government had not campaigned for the contact-free option of voting as explicitly as the Viennese did in their municipal council election last year.
In October 2020, almost 44 percent of the votes in Vienna came by voting card – more than double the previous top values. The fact that participation fell by 9.5 percentage points to 65.3 percent was due to the fact that many disappointed FP voters stayed at home. In Upper Austria many (if not as many as in Vienna) former FP voters said goodbye – but a large number of them moved towards MFG. The results did not reveal how many Upper Austrians used postal voting. Because there the postal vote was counted on Sunday.
