Austrian Elections & Politics 2.0 (Presidential runoff re-vote: 4 Dec. 2016)

[Cranberry]

^ Postal ballots are not counted until tomorrow, so relax, sit back, there's no way to know the end result yet.

what are these from?

http://wahl16.bmi.gv.at/1605-bw_ov_0.html

https://twitter.com/florianklenk/status/734468760774529024

The BMI (Ministry of the Interior) apparently has technical problems - so it doesn't mean anything, don't get too hyped over this

apparently it's probably just test data (though some or saying it's the unreleased postal vote tally). it's inaccessible anywhere on the site without typing in that direct url

Seems unlikely, as per r/Austria - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjFcoegXEAEZ1T7.jpg:large

[Cranberry]

I can already hear Kickl...

[Cranberry]

Do any regions/towns stand out for an unusual performance by the candidates?

Vorarlberg and Western Tyrol (here especially VdB's home region of the Kaunertal, where he won some 80% of the vote in some municipalities) are usually very strong ÖVP-regions, so center-right-ish, but this time voted ~55% Van der Bellen on average (this might be due to the fact that the FPÖ is regularly weakest here out west). Other than that, it's a pretty huge urban/suburban - rural divide, so nothing that was not expected.

[Cranberry]

Where do you get those numbers? derstandard.at is not working for me, probably overloaded.

[Cranberry]

http://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/politik/LIVE-Ticker-Erste-Wahlkarten-sind-ausgezaehlt/236731343

oe24 says Van der Bellen has it!

[Cranberry]

Nothing so far on orf.at...

[Cranberry]

Yeah, I'm still not quite convinved until I hear it from the ORF...

Let's say I'm very optimistic now however

[Cranberry]

^ Don't know about you, but if I have no clue about something I rather keep it shut.

Anyways, this is so thrilling. Web pages all seem to not work, I have the TV on so I can see it on ORF 2

[Cranberry]

Still no postal vote tallies from Tyrol - I get the feeling those few districts we are waiting for might be from around here.

[Cranberry]

So, is it officially done then?

oe24 said so, but not ORF... Probably?

[Cranberry]

Special Zeit im Bild (ORF news programme) at 16:13

[Cranberry]

Well, congratulations to Cranberry and Tender. As much as I dislike VdB, I don't live in Austria and I don't experience any consequences of this whatsoever; by contrast, I imagine it must have been terrible for you guys (though more so for Cranberry...) if Hofer had won.

And now please tell VdB that he should give passports to the people who fled Austria during WWII, and to their descendants.

I guess you would like to vote for his re-election in 2022?

Guys I can't describe how happy I am right now. Even if it's just a relatively small victory, it still is the first time since, idk what, 2002 or whatever, that the FPÖ has really, truly, been f-ing defeated. It's so great.

Also, you all should really be able to read Austrian dialect - Facebook at the moment is hilarious

[Cranberry]

Tirol switched with postal votes to 51,4 VdB; as did OÖ to 51,2. Vienna, Linz, Innsbruck up at 63% VdB, Graz even at 64%.

Eisenstadt (capital of the Burgenland) switched to VdB as well, this means he won every single one of the nine state capitals, while winning four of nine states in total.

[Cranberry]

Btw it's kind of odd that news was warning Hofer would be the first nasty fascist to come to power since the war. I mean have they forgotten the time Austrians elected a literal nazi war criminal as president lol?

They must have also forgotten then the time then when the UN elected him Secretary General.

On a serious note though, while Waldheim was a horrible being, he was very, err moderated, in outlook and policy when compared to Hofer, not really far from Kohl or Chirac, so the continental Christian-democratic consensus of that time and age. The problem about him was more his past and his lying about the past than his actual policy (not that policy ever mattered when we were electing our President, until the media certainly discovered that that should change this spring) Hofer is obviously one dimension further from the centre.

[Cranberry]

Except an FPÖ victory at the next election would have come even if Hofer won - they would not have had to wait all the time until 2018, he could have simply dismissed the government at any point of his liking, and appoint Strache PM - he would then lack the confidence of parliament obviously, petition the president to dismiss parliament and call new elections - boom you have Chancellor Strache in autumn 2016 or spring 2017.

This Van der Bellen victory now gives us twofold: first, there is a decidedly non-FPÖ person at a position that can reasonably exercise checks and balances against an FPÖ government. Secondly, this seriously undermines Strache's position as the untouched champion of the FPÖ, when you now have with Hofer a person who is undoubtedly more popular and able to reach out to further voter segments. If things turn out well, we could have FPÖ infighting crippling their possible election performance.

[Cranberry]

Very nice maps, Tender. Sadly, my district (Imst) sticks out like a sore thumb in the sea of green that is the West. Still, this map once again shows us that the west is just the best part of Austria

[Cranberry]

Non natives a treat to jews???

Toulouse? Brussels? Copenhagen? Hypercacher? Ilan Halimi? And then all these "small", "insignificant" acts of violence and threats that go unnoticed for the general public.

Toulouse? You mean Mohammed Merah?
It happened in 2012 much before the refugee crisis. And Mohammed Merah wasn't even a refugee. He was french.
And regarding Bruxelles, same thing, it has been perpetuated by people born in Belgium, not by Syrian refugees.

I'm pretty sure David knows that as much as we do. Still, he does have a point - there is a considerable amount of anti-semitism present in modern Europe, and this is anti-semitism is present to a larger amount among groups with a migrant background than among those of "native population", to use a term I do not quite like myself but that is probably understood. That it is not to say that this is only limited to people with migrant backgrounds, far from it actually, nor that this migrant background is the direct reason for its manifestation - in fact, this has far more to do with a certain socio-economic background, which people with a migrant background are sadly far too often trapped in in modern European society (there is I guess no word to better sum up this socio-economic background than Banlieue). But the fact is that there is a problem with anti-semitism, one the left or "established" parties are quite often a bit too quick to dismiss as "non-significant" or even petty, often in a false fear of being labeled anti-immigrant or racist or whatnot. This has one sad result - it allows far right parties, be it FN or PVV or DFP or FPÖ, to capitalise on this issue, and put up a correlation with islamphobia and anti-immigrant sentiments that, in my eyes, should not exist.

So to sum up, I agree with David that there is an issue with anti-semitism, that this is often related with migrant communities, and that this issue is not treated accordingly by leftist and established parties. I believe this needs to be adressed, also by leftist and established parties, but not by putting the blame on migrant communities such as far right parties currently do, but by actively combating and showing absolutely no tolerance to anti-semitism wherever it may arise, if among people with migrant background or among "native" Europeans.

[Cranberry]

So to sum up, I agree with David that there is an issue with anti-semitism, that this is often related with migrant communities, and that this issue is not treated accordingly by leftist and established parties. I believe this needs to be adressed, also by leftist and established parties, but not by putting the blame on migrant communities such as far right parties currently do, but by actively combating and showing absolutely no tolerance to anti-semitism wherever it may arise, if among people with migrant background or among "native" Europeans.

If only more people would think like you do

Don't be too quick with that, I'm sure you would hate basically all the rest of my positions and ideas

[Cranberry]

Anyway moving on, shall we talk about the truly important aspect of this election? Namely LOOOOOOOOOOOL SPOVP

SPÖ and ÖVP are sulking that much that they didn't even send a guy to the ORF programme yesterday afternoon - and even the Team Stronach sent the one guy they have left there.

[Cranberry]

Don't know about some locals, there are always a few around after all, but federal elections (scheduled for at least) in autumn 2018, state elections in Tyrol, NÖ, Carinthia, I'm not sure but I guess also Salzburg, also in 2018

[Cranberry]

What makes the West and Eastern Upper Austria more inclined to vote for VdB than other rural areas?

Very simplistically, those are the three states that are doing best - OÖ, Tirol, Vorarlberg all have unemployment rates that are 3 points lower than the Austrian average, while having the strongest economic growth. Eastern Upper Austria is furthermore also Linz suburbia (the second biggest metropolitan area in Austria), while parts of Southern Upper Austria are ancestral SPÖ / industrial and mining territory, that has managed the transition pretty well and is doing very good (tourism, some light mining and industry, being close to the big cities of Linz and Salzburg) economically. Interestingly, if you cross the border just southeast into Styria, you have a region that was similar to Southern OÖ until a few years ago, and that used to vote similar too, but that has not managed the transition at all, and is a region in strong decline by now - which is why they are voting strongly FPÖ.

In the case of Tirol (especially Western Tirol) and Vorarlberg also comes the point that, due to us being so far from Vienna (Zürich, Milan, Munich and even Paris are all actually closer than Vienna from where I live), the area as a whole is very much interconnected with the surrounding countries, Italy and Germany most of all, but also Switzerland and Liechtenstein in the case of Vorarlberg and some Tyrolean valleys, so very much profiting from the EU and European integration, more so than probably any other region in Austria (notice how this is directly correlating with the point above about those being the best-doing regions). This includes tourism, but also the service industry as a whole, and trade and commerce in general.

The FPÖ also was and his historically weak in my area, simply because the typical FPÖ voter doesn't exist here as there is no (declining) industry or big urban areas.

[Cranberry]

If 16 year olds didn't have the vote would Hofer have won?

ORF.at has motives plus demographic data here (obviously in German; scroll down to "Wahlverhalten nach Alter" (fourth-to-last) or "Wahlverhalten nach Alter und Geschlecht" (third-to-last)), which tells us Van der Bellen won under-29s by 54%. While that does not say us anything specifically about 16-18-year olds, we can probably assume they voted as under-29s in general, so given the extreme closeness of the race, yes, it could very well be.

[Cranberry]

Am I the only one seeing a problem with a party named the NEOs? or that term doesn't hold the neo-nazi meaning in Austria?

lol, I asked this before. This has the same connotation in the Netherlands as for you, but apparently not in Austria.

If anything, it makes me think of neo-liberal, which is also far closer to their ideology than neo-nazism. But no, I've actually never thought of that before you brought it up.

[Cranberry]

What's up with the non-contiguous part of Tirol? (this may not be the best thread for the question, but I've never noticed it before)

I hear a question about Tirol? I'm right onto it xD

Tirol, as you might know, is bigger than the Austrian state of Tirol - the county of Tirol, an entity (I'm not sure whether to call it a country or not, so we'll leave it at that) since the 13th century, until 1919 went as far south as the Lake Garda, including the nowadays Italian provinces of Bolzano/Bozen and Trento, known in German as Südtirol (South Tirol) and, the latter very archaically and with a kind of derogatory meaning, Welschtirol ("Welsh" Tirol -> this word has the exact same root as the Welsh from Wales, as it's the old Germanic word to denote Celts and/or Romans), nowadays we use the Italian name Trentino. Südtirol however included not only the modern province of Bozen, but also the court districts of Matrei and Lienz, which precisely make up that modern exclave. As opposed to the rest of Südtirol however*, those two lay on the Eastern side of the continental watershed, the one going to the Danube. At the Saint-Germain treaty in 1919, Italy received from the Entete as "price" for entering into the war against Austria-Hungary all those parts of the county of Tirol that lay on the southwestern, Italian-bound side of the watershed - so all of the Trentino, and practically of South Tirol, with the exception of the area around Matrei and Lienz, which remained with Austria, and obviously formed part of the new federal state of Tirol, as the (administrative) district of Lienz (there's a difference between court and administrative districts, and the latter didn't exist in the monarchy, afai).

*the star is here because there are actually two municipalities in modern-day South Tirol, and a part of a third, that are on the Eastern side of the watershed, and thus by the Saint Germain treaty should actually be part of Austria. These are the small towns of Innichen and Sexten (completely) and Toblach (partially) - Italy illegally occupied the former because of an important railway station, and the latter because it is at the end of the most important road north from Venice into the alps. Austria didn't have the power to protest that initially and the issue was later (my money is on Hitler, though I'm not sure - but when it comes to throwing South Tirol under the bus, Hitler is the go-to-guy) solved in Italy's favour. Italy generally, and not just the fascists, mind you, did some serious cobbling with borders and the such in that area, mainly to the extent to limit the barbaric Germanic minority up north to the smallest area possible, but that's not really your question, and I should really stop myself now, because I could write pages upon pages on that topic.

TL;dr - It's Osttirol, the district of Lienz, and formed historically part of South Tirol, within the larger county of Tirol. As opposed to the rest of South Tirol, it remained with Austria after 1919, and thus, with the federal state of Tirol, making up the Austrian part of the county of Tirol.

[Cranberry]

*the star is here because there are actually two municipalities in modern-day South Tirol, and a part of a third, that are on the Eastern side of the watershed, and thus by the Saint Germain treaty should actually be part of Austria. These are the small towns of Innichen and Sexten (completely) and Toblach (partially) - Italy illegally occupied the former because of an important railway station, and the latter because it is at the end of the most important road north from Venice into the alps.

That was part of the peace treaty:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Oh woops, I must have had something wrongly in mind then. There were some irregularities with the new border, but I cannot recall what it was just now. But the area of Innichen was it not then. Thanks for pointing it out!

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1920/3.html