Editing Simmering (Vienna) (section)

== Politics ==

Simmering was a stronghold for [[Social democracy|social democrats]] as early as the start of the 20th century. In the district vote of 1919, the social democrats won 21 positions in the district government, with the [[Christian Social Party (Austria)|Christian Social Party]] taking the next largest vote with only 7 seats and the ''Tschechische Liste'' (literally ''Czech list'') taking 2 seats.
The social democrats of Simmering and of the rest of the so-called "Rotes Wien" ([[Red Vienna]]) pushed to build housing developments throughout Vienna and in 1934, 19 ''[[Gemeindebau]]ten'' were built in Simmering.

The rise of [[Nazism]] in Vienna was hardly acknowledged in the vote of Simmering, as the party took only 7.2% of the vote in 1932, the worst outcome in the whole city. Even after 1945, the [[Social Democratic Party of Austria|Social Democratic Party]] (SPÖ) continued to dominate the votes. In the mid-1990s, the SPÖ fell from 59% to 48% of the vote and lost their majority, with the [[Freedom Party of Austria|Freedom Party]] (FPÖ) gaining support to 31% of the vote. The trend reversed itself in 2001, and the SPÖ retook 59.22% of the vote, FPÖ took 21.37%, [[Austrian People's Party]] (ÖVP) had 9.82%, the [[Austrian Green Party|Greens]] had 6.77%, and the [[Liberal Forum]] barely took a seat with 2.02% of the vote. In 2005, the SPÖ improved their result slightly to 60.7%, before losing the absolute majority with a loss of 11% at the following election in 2010, finishing with 49.2% of the vote. The ÖVP and Greens also  lost voters, while the FPÖ nearly doubled their share of the vote to 34.2%. In 2015, the SPÖ lost the relative majority to the FPÖ.  Simmering is the first Viennese district with an FPÖ district director.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" style="margin-left:1em;"
|---- bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
! colspan="2" | District Directors since 1945
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Eduard Pantucek ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||4/1945-7/1945
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Max Wopenka ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||1945–1952
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Josef Haas ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||1952–1964
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Wilhelm Weber ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||1964–1973
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Johann Paulas ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||1973–1980
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Otto Mraz ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||1980–1989
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Franz Haas ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||1989–2001
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Otmar Brix ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||2001–2003
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Renate Angerer ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||2003-2014
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Eva-Maria Hatzl ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||2014-2015
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Paul Johann Stadler ([[Freedom Party of Austria|FPÖ]])||2015-2020
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|Thomas Steinhart ([[Social Democratic Party of Austria|SPÖ]])||2020-present
|---- bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
|}