1962 General Election - Austrian Election Series

Austria's center-right government was reelected in 1959, its majority over the leftist SPÖ and KPÖ opposition however narrowed, with the FPÖ being thrown out of parliament. The government of Chancellor Kraus and Vice-Chancellor Gorbach was continued.

Austria entered the new decade with a continuation of the economical growth the fifties had seen. Slowly, the western mountainous regions, that in areas in Tirol, Salzburg and Vorarlberg had not seen any significant growth since the imperial age, developed and enlarged winter tourism based on the Swiss model, resulting in thousands of Germans and Dutch starting to cross the borders every December.

The new government proceeded to tackle its programs of "economic liberation" based on the United States, which was met with large opposition by the SPÖ and KPÖ, but also the rurally based farmers-wing of the ÖVP, resulting in a massive split both within the government and the ÖVP, between its rural wing of farmers and the pro-business liberal wing. Since the first often voted against many proposals perceived as too liberal in the ministry's council, Chancellor Kraus called a new election a year early in 1962, hoping to gain an outright majority for his party.

VdU:
Chancellor Kraus' VdU stands fully behind a program of "economic liberation" in order to further spur economical growth in Austria. They plan on privatising many industries and statal corporations, for example the steel industry (Voest), and lowering taxes for companies.

SPÖ:
Following the rapid ascent of the KPÖ, the SPÖ has to fight on two fronts, both from the left against the government and from the centre against the communists. While they vehemently oppose the government's proposed "economic liberation", they just as much try to not more than necessary entangle themselves with the communists, in order to gain among centrist and rural voters.

KPÖ:
The Austrian communists surprised everyone with scoring third in the elections of 1959 and scoring first in Vienna's municipal elections that year. Their brand of "European communism", supported by Tito in the southern neighbour Yugoslavia and similar to Italy's and France's communist parties is very moderate in comaprison to the Warsaw Pact states to the east, and places its impact far further on improving the worker's situation than on the overthrow of capitalism.

ÖVP:
After a series of losses and its fall to the fourth place, the ÖVP is at a low point, deeply divided between the farmers and pro-business wings. The latter could keep the upper hand at the party convention, and a more liberal platform was enacted; the former however, led by Tirol's governor Hans Tschiggfrey, warned they would not further support a new coalition with the VdU should the party again score losses.

FPÖ:
The FPÖ, after being thrown out of parliament, dissapeared nearly totally from the public face. They are just present in their "Old Nazi" constituency, decrying any form of "Bolshevism" and communism gaining to much influence in Austria.

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