The 2010 Burgenland state election was held on 30 May 2010 to elect the members of the 20th

Landtag A Landtag (State Diet) is generally the legislative assembly or parliament of a federated state or other subnational self-governing entity in German-speaking nations. It is usually a unicameral assembly exercising legislative competence in non ...

of Burgenland. The governing Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) narrowly lost its majority, while the

Freedom Party of Austria The Freedom Party of Austria (german: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Austria. It was led by Norbert Hofer from September 2019 to 1 June 2021.Staff (1 June 2021"Aus ...

(FPÖ) and List Burgenland (LBL) made gains.

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

Hans Niessl was returned for a third term.

Background

Prior to amendments made in 2014, the Burgenland constitution mandated that cabinet positions in the state government (state councillors, german: Landesräten) be allocated between parties proportionally in accordance with the share of votes won by each; this is known as

Proporz ''Proporz'' (, from german: Proportionalität, "proportionality") is a long-standing practice in the Second Austrian Republic in which positions in government are distributed between political parties in a manner proportional to their electoral o ...

. As such, the government was a perpetual coalition of all parties that qualified for at least one state councillor. In the 2005 election, the SPÖ won an absolute majority with 52.2% of votes.

Electoral system

The 36 seats of the Landtag of Burgenland are elected via

open list Open list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a party's candidates are elected. This is as opposed to closed list, which allows only active members, par ...

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

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 Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO( ...

are combined with

Eisenstadt-Umgebung District The Bezirk Eisenstadt-Umgebung ( hr, Kotar Željezno-okolica) is an administrative district (''Bezirk'') in the federal state of Burgenland, Austria. The area of the district is 455.5 km², with a population of 44,257 (2022), and a populatio ...

). 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 The electoral threshold, or election threshold, is the minimum share of the primary vote that a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature. This limit can ...

. Seats are distributed in constituencies according to the Hare quota, with any remaining seats allocated using the

D'Hondt method The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is a method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in party-list proportional representation systems. It belongs to the class of highest ...

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.

Contesting parties

In addition to the parties already represented in the Landtag, one party collected enough signatures to be placed on the ballot. * List Burgenland (''LBL'')

Results

Results by constituency

References

{{Austrian local elections 2010 elections in Austria State elections in Austria May 2010 events in Europe