ABSTRACT
The rise and fall of the Freiheitliche Partei Osterreichs (FPO, Freedom Party) led by Jorg Haider greatly shaped electoral dynamics; the Freedom Party's success started with reaching out to Osterreichische Volkspartei (OVP) voters and continued with attracting former Social Democratic Party (SPO) voters. After times of great stability in the Austrian political system during the 1970s, electoral volatility increased substantially in the 1980s and the 1990s. The successes and failures of the FPO have had a great impact on electoral mobility in Austria. The rise of the FPO in the 1980s and 1990s was based on large gains from the SPO and OVP. Between 1986 and 2006, the OVP lost approximately 812,000 voters to the FPO, coming close to the social democratic losses to the FPO. Elections with powerful mobilization campaigns resulted in an increasing turnout and, by turning abstainers into voters, in a relatively high numbers of mobilized nonvoters.
