Cisleithanian legislative election, 1907

Cisleithanian Imperial Council election, 1907
All 516 seats in the Imperial Council; 259 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	4,676,350 (84.60%)
Minister-President of Cisleithania before election; Max Wladimir von Beck ; Independent	Elected Minister-President of Cisleithania ; Max Wladimir von Beck ; Independent

Last updated March 20, 2019

A legislative election to elect the members of the 11th Imperial Council were held in Cisleithania, the northern and western ("Austrian") crown lands of Austria-Hungary, on 14 and 23 May 1907.^[1] They were the first elections held under universal male suffrage, after an electoral reform abolishing tax paying requirements for voters had been adopted by the Council and was endorsed by Emperor Franz Joseph earlier in the year.^[2] However, seat allocations were based on tax revenues from the States.^[2]

The Imperial Council was the legislature of the Austrian Empire from 1861, and from 1867 the legislature of Cisleithania within Austria-Hungary. It was a bicameral body: the upper house was the House of Lords, and the lower house was the House of Deputies. To become law, bills had to be passed by both houses, signed by the government minister responsible, and then granted royal assent by the Emperor. After having been passed, laws were published in the Reichsgesetzblatt. In addition to the Imperial Council, the fifteen individual crown lands of Cisleithania had their own diets.

Cisleithania was a common yet unofficial denotation of the northern and western part of Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy created in the Compromise of 1867—as distinguished from Transleithania, i.e. the Hungarian Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen east of ("beyond") the Leitha River.

Crown land, also known as royal domain or demesne, is a territorial area belonging to the monarch, who personifies the Crown. It is the equivalent of an entailed estate and passes with the monarchy, being inseparable from it. Today, in Commonwealth realms such as Canada and Australia, crown land is considered public land and is apart from the monarch's private estate.

Electoral system

Under the shadow of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and large-scale demonstrations organized by the Social Democrats, the emperor to placate the public had a reform of the former five-class suffrage system, drafted by Minister-President Paul Gautsch von Frankenthurn. His successor, Baron Max Wladimir von Beck, pushed it through against fierce resistance from the Austrian House of Lords and the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The Social Democratic Party of Austria is a social-democratic political party in Austria and alongside with the People's Party one of the country's two traditional major parties.

Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections. In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, which is the right to stand for election. The combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage.

Paul Gautsch Freiherr von Frankenthurn was an Austrian statesman who served three times as Minister-President of Cisleithania.

Elections in the constituencies of "the Kingdoms and Lands represented in the Imperial Council" were held according to a two-round system. If no candidate received the required absolute majority on May 14, only the two candidates receiving the most votes survived to the second round. on May 23. The 516 representatives of the constituent crown lands were thus elected, 130 from Bohemia, 106 from Galicia, 64 from Lower Austria and 49 from Moravia. The numerous political associations were again split according to ethnicity ("nations"), with a result that no government could ever rely on a stable majority.

The two-round system is a voting method used to elect a single winner, where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate. However, if no candidate receives the required number of votes, then those candidates having less than a certain proportion of the votes, or all but the two candidates receiving the most votes, are eliminated, and a second round of voting is held.

The Kingdom of Bohemia, sometimes in English literature referred to as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe, the predecessor of the modern Czech Republic. It was an Imperial State in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Bohemian king was a prince-elector of the empire. The kings of Bohemia, besides Bohemia, also ruled the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which at various times included Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and parts of Saxony, Brandenburg, and Bavaria.

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Galicia or Austrian Poland, was established in 1772 as a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy as a result of the First Partition of Poland. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, it became a Kingdom under Habsburg rule. In 1804 it became a crownland of the Austrian Empire. From 1867 it was an ethnic Pole-administered autonomous crownland under Cisleithanian Austria-Hungary, until its dissolution in 1918. The country was carved from the entire south-western part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the many ceremonial titles of the princes of Hungary was "ruler of Galicia and Lodomeria". Following the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Austrian Empire ceded portions of Galicia to the Russian Empire, West Galicia and Tarnopol District.

Results

The right-wing Christian Social Party emerged as the largest bloc in Parliament, holding 95 of the 516 seats, followed by the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria with 50 seats. The former won most rural constituencies in Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Salzburg, Tyrol, and Vorarlberg). It also achieved the majority in the capital, Vienna, benefitting from the popularity of the Christian Social mayor, Karl Lueger. In the German constituencies of Bohemia and Moravia and in Carinthia, the German national parties (German People's Party etc.) did well. The Social Democrats had their strongholds in the cities other than Vienna: Graz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Brno and Linz.

The Christian Social Party was a major conservative political party in the Cisleithanian crown lands of Austria-Hungary and in the First Republic of Austria, from 1891 to 1934. The party was also affiliated with Austrian nationalism that sought to keep Catholic Austria out of the state of Germany founded in 1871, that it viewed as Protestant Prussian-dominated, and identified Austrians on the basis of their predominantly Catholic religious identity as opposed to the predominantly Protestant religious identity of the Prussians. It is a predecessor of the contemporary Austrian People's Party.

Upper Austria is one of the nine states or Bundesländer of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders on Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as on the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg. With an area of 11,982 km² (4,626 sq mi) and 1.437 million inhabitants, Upper Austria is the fourth-largest Austrian state by land area and the third-largest by population.

Lower Austria is the northeasternmost of the nine states of Austria. Since 1986, the capital of Lower Austria has been St. Polten, the most recently designated capital in Austria. Previously, Lower Austria's capital was Vienna, even though Vienna has not officially been part of Lower Austria since 1921. With a land area of 19,186 km² (7,408 sq mi) and a population of 1.612 million people, Lower Austria is the country's largest state; it is the second most populous after the federal state of Vienna. Other main cities are Amstetten, Krems an der Donau and Wiener Neustadt.

Voter turnout was 84.6%.^[3]

Party	Votes	%	Seats	+/-
Croatian Nation
Croatian National Party	23,482	0.51	2	4
Party of Rights	16,013	0.35	2	1
People's Party (Anti-Resolutionist)	15,683	0.34	2	New
People's Party (Resolutionist)	15,283	0.33	4	New
Croatian Independents	6,373	0.14	1	New
People's Party (Democratic)	4,441	0.10	0	New
Croatian Nation & Slovenian Nation
Slavic Social Democratic Party	10,518	0.23	0	New
Czech Nation
Social Democratic Party	389,960	8.45	22	New
Czech Agrarian Party	206,784	4.48	27	25
Catholic-National Conservative Parties in Bohemia & Moravia	182,500	3.95	10	New
Christian Social Party in Bohemia & Moravia	182,500	3.95	7	5
Young Czech Party	116,524	2.52	21	29
Czech National Social Party	75,101	1.63	6	2
Old Czech Party	32,224	0.70	5	5
Czech Independents	15,952	0.35	2	2
Czech Realist Party	14,704	0.32	1	New
Czech Paper Candidates	14,339	0.31	0	New
Czech Radical Progressive Party	9,899	0.21	3	3
Czech National Party	9,828	0.21	1	1
Czech Progressive Constitutionalist Party	7,879	0.17	1	1
German Nation
Christian Social Party	542,505	11.73	65	40
Social Democratic Party	513,219	11.12	50	38
German Conservative Party	193,753	4.20	31	3
Agrarian Party	132,978	2.88	19	16
German People's Party	131,474	2.85	32	19
German Progressive Party	103,315	2.24	19	15
German Radical Party	70,564	1.53	14	New
Pan-German Association	20,693	0.45	3	New
Upper Austrian Farmers' Club	15,283	0.33	0	New
German-National Party	10,457	0.23	0	22
Officials’ Party	5,701	0.12	0	New
Free Socialists	5,289	0.11	1	New
German Conservative Farmers' Party	4,947	0.011	0
Independent German Radicals	4,569	0.10	0	New
Independent Pan-Germans	3,659	0.08	0	New
German Workers' Party	3,486	0.08	0	New
German-Christian Party	3,286	0.07	0	New
German Independents	2,806	0.06	0
Social Politicians	2,386	0.05	1
Tirol People’s Association	1,113	0.02	0	New
Radical Party	785	0.02	0	New
Central Industrial Committee	150	0.00	0	New
Italian Nation
Trentino Christian People’s Party	40,943	0.89	7	New
Italian National-Liberal Party	27,723	0.28	3	9
Italian Social Democratic Party	19,918	0.43	5	New
Italian-National Party	9,673	0.21	1	1
Italian Clerical Party	9,599	0.21	2	2
Italian Christian Social Party	8,977	0.19	1	New
Italian Independents	4,008	0.09	0	New
Italian Liberal Farmers' Association	1,065	0.02	0	New
Jewish Candidates
Jewish National Party	31,941	0.68	4	New
Polish Nation
Polish People's Party	165,980	3.60	16	12
Polish Conservative Party	131,540	2.85	15	39
Polish Centre Party	108,247	2.34	14	New
Polish National Democratic Party	104,544	2.26	14	11
Polish Social Democratic Party	65,057	1.41	6	New
Polish Democratic Party	45,942	1.00	11	5
Polish Christian Social Party	11,210	0.24	1
Independent Socialists	8,022	0.17	1	New
Polish Agrarian Party	4,971	0.11	0
Polish National Party	3,675	0.08	0	1
Polish Progressive Democratic Party	1,684	0.04	1
Romanian Nation
Romanian National (Defense) Party	31,674	0.68	3	2
Romanian National (Democratic) Party	15,195	0.33	1	New
Romanian Independents	4,655	0.10	1	New
Romanian Social Democratic Party	823	0.02	0	New
Ruthenian Nation
Ukrainian National Democratic Party–Young Ruthenian Party	304,410	6.59	20	19
Russian National Party	162,663	3.52	5	2
Ukrainian Radical Party	105,118	2.28	5	3
Ukrainian Social Democratic Party	27,978	0.61	2	New
Serbian Nation
Serb People's Party	7,808	0.17	2
Serbian Independents	3,975	0.09	0	New
Slovenian Nation
Slovene Clerical Party	48,431	1.05	8	3
Slovene People's Party	48,175	1.04	10	New
Slovene Liberal Party	23,292	0.74	4	1
Slovenian National Party	16,830	0.36	2	2
Slovene Social Democratic Party	13,189	0.29	0	New
Slovenian National-Progressive Party	10,921	0.24	0	New
Slovenian Pro-German Party	6,001	0.13	0
Slovenian Agrarian Party	1,309	0.03	0
Slovenian Independents	873	0.02	0	New
Unknown or split
Unknown or split votes	39,416	0.85	–	–
Invalid/blank votes	58,990	–
Total	4,676,350	100	516	91
Registered voters/turnout	5,526,203	84.62	-
Source: ANNO

By parliamentary grouping

Grouping	Seats	+/-
Christian Social Union	96	71
Poland Club	55	10
German National Association	51	New
Club of German Social Democrats	50	39
Group of the German Agrarian Parties	33	24
Club of Bohemian Agrarians	30	24
Bohemian Club	25	19
Ruthenian Club	25	17
Club of Bohemian Social Democrats	24	New
Association of Yugoslavians	20	5
Catholic-National Party	17	New
Slovenian Club	17	New
Polish People’s Party	16	11
German Progressive Union	15	12
German Radical Group	13	New
Bohemian National Social Club	11	New
Italian People’s Party	10	New
Club of Polish Social Democrats	6	New
Group of Italian Social Democrats	5	New
Romanian Club	5
Club of Liberal Italians	4	New
Jewish Club	4	New
Pan-German Group	3	5
Representation of Ruthenian-Ukrainian Social Democrats	2	New
Independents	12	20
Total	516	91
Source: ANNO

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References

↑ Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p196 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
1 2 Nohlen & Stöver, p184
↑ Nohlen & Stöver, p209

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[1] Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p196 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7

[NS1-2] 1 2 Nohlen & Stöver, p184

[3] Nohlen & Stöver, p209