Parliamentary elections were held in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

on 6 March 1966. The result was a victory for the

Austrian People's Party The Austrian People's Party (german: Österreichische Volkspartei , ÖVP ) is a Christian-democratic and liberal-conservative political party in Austria. Since December 2021, the party has been led provisionally by Karl Nehammer. It is curr ...

(ÖVP), which won 85 of the 165 seats. Voter turnout was 94%. During the campaign, ÖVP

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Josef Klaus (who had succeeded Alfons Gorbach in 1964) had called for an end to the

grand coalition A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political parties of opposing political ideologies unite in a coalition government. The term is most commonly used in countries where there ar ...

with the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ) that had governed since 1945. The election results seemingly left Klaus free to break off the coalition; the ÖVP won an outright majority of three seats, enough to govern alone. However, Klaus reversed himself and proposed a new coalition agreement. The SPÖ leadership supported a renewed coalition, but talks failed when the SPÖ rank and file balked at the proposed coalition terms. Klaus then formed an exclusively ÖVP cabinet, the first one-party government of the Second Republic.Austria
at

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It was also the first purely centre-right government in Austria since before

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. As of the

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, this is the only time in the ÖVP's history where it has governed in a majority. The ÖVP had won a majority of seats once before, during the first postwar election in

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, but opted to lead a grand coalition rather than govern alone.

Results

References

Elections in Austria

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