2023 Tirol legislative election

2023 Tirol legislative election

5 May 2023 (2023-05-05)
All 400 seats in the National Council 201 seats needed for a majority
Registered	23,061,914
First party Second party Third party   Leader Albrec Pescosta Ulrike Kindle Hugo Sollner Party League Labour Greens Leader since 4 April 2020 10 July 1998 16 July 2018 Leader's seat Chiant Maran Centrala Schwaz Nord Last election 122 seats, 30.1% 224 seats, 56.0% 7 seats, 1.9% Seats won 154 132 47 Seat change 32 92 40   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Matteo Fòuro Bërtold Meller Alexander Gauland Party Alliance Free Voters of Trentin Freedom & Justice Leader since 12 March 2022 16 March 2022 23 April 2015 Leader's seat Fala Nord Comezadurå & Plia Auc Ampëz Nord (defeated) Last election 3 seats, 0.9% 0 seats, x% 27 seats, 6.7% Seats won 25 23 15 Seat change 22 23 12
Premier before election Ulrike Kindle Labour Elected Premier TBD

The 2023 Tirol legislative election was held on 5 May 2023, with 23,061,914 registed voters entitled to vote to elect deputies to the National Council. The election took place in 400 constituencies across Tirol under the Alternative Vote (AV) system.

The election resulted in a large swing against the governing Labour Party, towards the League Party. The Labour Party lost the 24 seat majority it had held, but no party attained the 201 seats necessary for a majority, resulting in a hung parliament. The League Party, led by Albrec Pescosta, won the most seats, but fell 47 seats short of a majority.

A hung parliament had been largely anticipated by the opinion polls in the run-up to the election, with parties engaging in some pre-election negotiations to pre-empt coalition negotiations.

Coalition negotiations began in the immediate aftermath of the election, with a number of potential agreements. After eight days of negotiations the League Party reached a coalition agreement with the Alliance Party and the Free Voters of Trentin on 13 May 2023. Ulrike Kindle resigned as Premier and Leader of the Labour Party the following day.

The election was seen as a failure for the anti-establishment parties, from whom the Freedom and Justice Party and Liberty Party lost twelve and ten seats respectively, rendering them irrelevant to any coaltion formation. The Greens and Free Voters of Trentin took extensive advantage of dissatisfaction in Provinzia Trentin with the performance of the Labour Party, with the Greens taking many of the urban areas that had historically supported the Internationale Party prior to the Ozidenta Affair and the Free Voters of Trentin taking many of the rural areas that were dissatisfied with Labour, but still distrusted the League Party.

Electoral system

Tirol uses the Alternative Vote system, a majoritarian instant run-off voting system with single member constituencies. The National Council has 400 members, elected to six year terms. These seats are distributed between the five provinces and Innsbruck Autonomous District.

Each voter may cast preference votes up to the number of candidates, writing "1" next to the highest preference candidate, "2" next to the second and so forth. To begin with, polling agents count the first preference votes, if the candidate with the highest proportion of votes has an absolute majority (in excess of 50%) of the votes, they are elected. If not, then the candidate with the lowest proportion of the first preference votes is eliminated, and the second preferences of their voters are allocated to the other candidates. This process is repeated until one candidate exceeds 50%+1 of the vote.

The use of this electoral system is widely viewed as lowering the barrier of entry for third parties compared to the Single Member Plurality system historically used in Tirol, and has seen a far larger number of candidates competing on average in each constituency. It was widely viewed as instrumental in allowing the Greens to become a considerable political force.

Political parties and candidates

Main article: List of political parties in Tirol

The table below lists the parliamentary groups of the previous legislature:

Logo		Name	Abbr.	Ideology	Leader	Cunsëi	Senât
Government
		Labour Party Lëurparti dl Tirol	LPdlT	Democratic Socialism	Ulrike Kindle	392 / 700	6 / 18
	60px	League Party Liga Parti	Liga	Conservatism Traditionalism	Albrec Pescosta	212 / 700	7 / 18
	60px	Freedom and Justice Party Liedità e Pruzessuela Parti	LPP	Right-wing populism	Alexander Gauland	47 / 700	2 / 18
	60px	Liberty Party Liedità Parti	LaP	Libertarianism	Christian Lindner	24 / 700	0 / 18
		Greens Vërc	V	Green politics	Hugo Sollner Nina Spescha	13 / 700	2 / 18
	60px	Alliance Party Parti Allianze	PA	Liberalism Free-market	Matteo Fòuro	6 / 700	0 / 18
	60px	Internationale Party Parti Internationale	PI	Marxism Internationalism	Carlo Pasc	3 / 700	1 / 18
	60px	Adige Party Partie d'Adige	PdA	Regionalism Ethnonationalism	Clarence de Beautfort	2 / 700	0 / 18

Party leaders

As the incumbent leader of the Labour Party, Ulrike Kindle retained the party's candidature for the Premiership. Despite rumours of a leadership challenge amidst poor performance in the opinion polls, no such contest was launched.

Albrec Pescosta was elected to be leader of the League Party on 4 April 2020, after a successful leadership challenge against the then incumbent Martin Bacan in the 2020 League Party leadership election.

Alexander Gauland retained the leadership of the Freedom and Justice Party after increasing the party's number of seats drastically in the 2017 election.

Campaign

Debates

All the major media companies held televised debates, with the Radiobroadcasting Agency of Tirol holding three separate debates: one head-to-head between Kindle and Pescosta, one including all party candidates, and one of the party leaders of Provinzia Trentin, owing to the significant rise in support for the Free Voters of Trentin in public opinion polling.

2023 Tirol legislative election debates
Date	Organisers	Venue	Region	Viewing figures (millions)	P  Present   S  Surrogate   NI  Not invited   A  Absent   I  Invited   N  No debate
					Labour	League	F&J	Liberty	Green	Alliance	VLT
24 April	ART1	ART Studio, Innsbruck	Tirol	TBA	S Killias	S Sante	P Gauland	P Jen	P Sollner	P Fòuro	P Meller
26 April	ART Trentin	Pretoria Guild Hall, Trënt	Trentin	TBA	S Pesko	A	NI	NI	S Menduri	S Salaria	P Meller
30 April	ART1	ART Studio, Innsbruck	Tirol	TBA	P Kindle	P Pescosta	NI	NI	NI	NI	NI

Results

Summary

↓

154	23	25	132	47	24
League	VLT	ALL	Labour	Green	O

Party		Leader	CDTs				First preference votes
				Of total		+/–		Of total
	League	Albrec Pescosta	154	38.5%	154 / 400	32	4,361,519	26.13%
	Labour	Ulrike Kindle	132	33.0%	132 / 400	92	3,521,892	21.1%
	Greens	Hugo Sollner	47	11.8%	47 / 400	40	2,841,736	17.03%
	Alliance	Matteo Fòuro	25	6.3%	25 / 400	22	2,267,796	13.59%
	Free Voters of Trentin	Bërtold Meller	23	5.8%	23 / 400	23	444,692	2.66%
	Freedom and Justice	Alexander Gauland	15	3.8%	15 / 400	12	1,518,952	9.1%
	Liberty	Amadio Irsara	4	1.0%	4 / 400	10	1,222,149	7.32%
	Independent candidates	No leader	0	0.0%	0 / 400	–	200,257	1.2%
	Internationale	Tbd	0	0.0%	0 / 400	3	194,496	1.17%
	Red Eagle	Joseph Planta	0	0.0%	0 / 400	–	58,126	0.35%
	National Corporatists	Felice Rudiferia	0	0.0%	0 / 400	–	47,287	0.28%
	Adige Party	Marc Rousseau	0	0.0%	0 / 400	2	11,700	0.07%
Total			400				16,690,602	100%
Registered voters and turnout							23,059,918	72.4%

Government formation

Labour and the Greens initially agreed to extend their Senate agreement to the National Council, however, this left them with only 179 seats, still short of the 201 necessary. In order to facilitate negotiations with the liberal Alliance Party, the League Party ruled out any agreement with the Freedom and Justice Party on 6 May 2023. This left three alternative coalition agreements, Labour-Green-Alliance, Labour-Green-FVT and League-Alliance-FVT.