Austrian Elections & Politics - Version 1.0

[EPG]

I am being very inarticulate! I am not explaining myself very well.

I think you are correct and the effect of having no NEOS would be to increase the ÖVP and Green vote more than the SPÖ.

It also seems from the presidential poll that social class doesn't matter in those elections.

[Tender Branson]

I am being very inarticulate! I am not explaining myself very well.

I think you are correct and the effect of having no NEOS would be to increase the ÖVP and Green vote more than the SPÖ.

It also seems from the presidential poll that social class doesn't matter in those elections.

In presidential elections, popularity plays a big role - that's why Pröll and VdB do well.

Social class is important in the case of turnout: FPÖ-voters for example do not really care about presidential elections (or not at all) and actually many of their voters want to abolish the Presidency alltogether. They are also much less likely to vote in PE, unlike ÖVP/Green-voters who are usually the most reliable voters. This is the reason why the FPÖ always does badly in these elections (and in the poll). That's also the reason why Pröll owns the center-right spectrum.

[Tender Branson]

The Pirate Party has now also managed to be on the ballot in the Vorarlberg state election on September 21.

About 2 weeks ago, NEOS already announced that they have more than 400 signatures.

The Men's Party already has 320 signatures.

[Tender Branson]

My early prediction for the Vorarlberg state election:

37% ÖVP (-14%)
25% FPÖ (no change)
15% Greens (+4%)
11% NEOS (+11%)
10% SPÖ (no change)
  2% Pirates (+2%)
  0% Others (-3%)

Coalitions should be interesting:

Between 1974 and 2009, the ÖVP always entered a coalition with the FPÖ - despite the fact that the ÖVP had always won an absolute majority of seats in the state parliament.

During the 2009 campaign, the FPÖ-leader Egger made an anti-semitic comment and the ÖVP said they would not enter a coalition with the FPÖ anymore between 2009-14, because of the comments.

Considering that Egger is still party leader and frontrunner of the FPÖ this year, that could leave the ÖVP (which is virtually certain to lose its absolute majority) looking for other options.

NEOS is unlikely to be an option for the ÖVP, because they are the reason why the ÖVP will do badly in the election (=> NEOS is the "ÖVP-light" or "The 21st-century-ÖVP"). If the ÖVP manages to portray NEOS as naive newcomers and hold them to 7-8% in the election, while the ÖVP stays above 40% - then I could see a coalition between them (in case both have a majority of seats and both leaderships are willing.

The most likely option by far though is ÖVP-Greens, which would mean the Greens enter the 6th state government out of 9 (only Lower Austria, Styria and Burgenland would then have no Greens in their state governments).

[Tender Branson]

Tomorrow, all parties that want to be on the ballot in Vorarlberg have to hand in the 400 signatures.

Currently, the following 9 parties have announced that they have enough signatures (or are already in the state parliament):

* ÖVP
* FPÖ
* Greens
* SPÖ
* NEOS
* Pirates
* CPÖ (a small Christian Party)
* Men's Party
* WIR (a small Family Party)

The party "Die Buntkarierten" are still collecting, but they are unlikely to make the ballot in all 4 districts, maybe in 1 or 2.

[Tender Branson]

Health Minister Stöger (SPÖ) wants the western states of Vorarlberg and Tyrol to offer abortions for women in all public hospitals.

http://diestandard.at/2000003800462/Diskussion-um-Abtreibungen-in-Westoesterreich

The 2 states (both ÖVP-dominated) are the only ones who are not offering it in public hospitals and intend to keep it this way.

Which means women from these states often have to drive to Switzerland, Salzburg or Vienna (some doctors offer it privately in V+T, but the price is really high: 800-1000€, compared with ca. 400€ in Vienna).

Unlike in other Western European countries, women who want an abortion need to pay for themselves - it's not included in the public healthcare system (ÖVP: "Abortion is not a disease !").

[EPG]

Most other Western European countries.

Is this a live issue at all in Austria?

[Tender Branson]

Most other Western European countries.

Is this a live issue at all in Austria?

No, abortion is only an issue for the CPÖ (and the very small fundie-wing of the ÖVP and FPÖ).

In general, nobody really cares about it.

[Tender Branson]

Poll update (Gallup/Ö24)

28% FPÖ (+7.5%)
24% SPÖ (-2.8%)
19% ÖVP (-5.0%)
14% Greens (+1.6%)
10% NEOS (+5.0%)
  5% Others (-6.3%)

Direct vote for Chancellor:

28% Heinz Christian Strache (FPÖ)
28% Werner Faymann (SPÖ-Incumbent)
16% Eva Glawischnig (Greens)
14% Michael Spindelegger (ÖVP)
14% Others (Matthias Strolz [NEOS] & Kathrin Nachbaur [TS])

http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20140802_OTS0020/oesterreich-umfrage-fpoe-schon-vier-prozent-vor-spoe-strache-bei-kanzler-frage-gleichauf-mit-faymann

Austria is currently debating how to best house asylum seekers, because the camp in Traiskirchen is currently about to burst with 1500 asylum seekers.

The camp has now been closed for further asylum seekers (see below).

There have been ca. 20.000 asylum requests last year and the numbers increased by another 3% in the first half of this year.

Austria currently is 3rd in the EU among 28 countries on a per-capita basis when it comes to granting people asylum.

Naturally, this debate helps the FPÖ - because not many people or mayors want additional asylum seekers in their towns.

The Ministry of Interior is now looking into the possibility of housing more asylum seekers in previously closed army quarters.

http://www.thelocal.at/20140731/freeze-on-admission-of-asylum-seekers-in-traiskirchen

http://www.thelocal.at/20140731/more-quarters-sought-for-asylum-seekers

[Tender Branson]

BARBARA PRAMMER
1954 – 2014

[Tender Branson]

homelycooking is currently creating a 1999 federal election map by town for us.

He already showed me the Vorarlberg part, which he already finished (and some of Tyrol):



The map should be ready in a few weeks (he has some other, more important stuff to do of course).

The 1999 result for Austria was:

SPÖ: 33,15%
FPÖ: 26,91% (1.244.087 votes)
ÖVP: 26,91% (1.243.672 votes)

[Cranberry]

Oh my god! This is just amazing! This part just ends 30 kilometres too far in the west, for my taste

The 1999 election really was a bit irregular for Austrian elections, to say so. Even just in Vorarlberg there are just so many special things to see - the FPÖ winning the whole district of Dornbirn (of course that's its stronghold in Vorarlberg, but nevertheless), being vey strong in some towns along the Bodensee (I can't explain the really strong performaance in Fußach - there are no major factories in that village, it's more agricultural)
Very interesting is also the FPÖ strength in the Montafon, the valley in the Southwest, and the SPÖ strength around Bludenz.

[Tender Branson]

Yeah, plus the margins that the ÖVP racks up in the Bregenzerwald (Bregenz Forest), the pitch-black area which is running from the center-North to the center-East of the state.

I'm actually surprised that the SPÖ won any town in Vorarlberg ...

Anyway, Vorarlberg has only some 100 towns, which means much more to come when the whole map is out later: Austria has 2400 towns.

[Cranberry]

Yeah, I would have never thought that the SPÖ would win any town in Vorarlberg

[Tender Branson]

I'm creating a few maps myself now, and I noticed a few funny things - for example:

Vienna's 10th district (Favoriten) - 1979 federal election: 73% SPÖ,   3% FPÖ
Vienna's 10th district (Favoriten) - 2013 federal election: 40% SPÖ, 29% FPÖ

Vienna's 11th district (Simmering) - 1979 federal election: 73% SPÖ,   3% FPÖ
Vienna's 11th district (Simmering) - 2013 federal election: 40% SPÖ, 31% FPÖ

[Cranberry]

Aren't those two districts the epitome of the Austrian workers constituency and their electoral behavior? So this basically just shows the immense shift towards the FPÖ from the workers constituency.

[Tender Branson]

Aren't those two districts the epitome of the Austrian workers constituency and their electoral behavior? So this basically just shows the immense shift towards the FPÖ from the workers constituency.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to point out.

[Tender Branson]

1979 Federal Election (winning party by district):



SPÖ: Red
ÖVP: Black

Result: 51.0% SPÖ, 41.9% ÖVP, 6.1% FPÖ, 1% KPÖ

[Tender Branson]

NEOS - actually a mini-party at 10% - want to introduce FPTP!, to be precise a mixed system: ~137 (Which would depend on the electorate of EastTyrol, according to party-officials.) per FPTP, ~46 with PR.

For this scenario it would be better if the total number of seats in Parliament would be lowered to 156, instead of the current 183.

Why ?

Because under the NEOS-proposal 75% of all seats would be elected via FPTP, while 25% would be elected via PR.

With 183 seats right now, this would mean 137 seats via FPTP and 46 with PR.

Austria only has 117 districts though (incl. the 23 in Vienna), so additional districts would need to be carved out from the current ones - which would be idiotic and would lead to gerrymandering - which no sane person wants.

So, better lower it and stay with the current 117 districts.

...

Anyway, this proposal would actually lead to fewer seats for NEOS than they currently have.

It would probably strenghten SPÖ and ÖVP and would even hurt FPÖ and Greens.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Yes, NEOS proposing FPTP seems really strange. Why support annihilation of their own party? Tender do you know what their reasoning behind their support of this is?

[Tender Branson]

Yes, NEOS proposing FPTP seems really strange. Why support annihilation of their own party? Tender do you know what their reasoning behind their support of this is?

It seems to be a part of their recent "Lobbyists out of Parliament !" campaign:

https://neos.eu/maximen-fuer-demokratie-und-teilhabe

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In short: Politicians in parliament should serve the people and should be held accountable by the people. That's why they want FPTP.

[Hash]

Generally, some reformists in countries with full PR tend to support FPTP arguing that the latter provides some kind of 'direct representation' of voters with greater accountability than people elected on a list, especially closed lists. At least that's why a lot of people in, say, the DA, support a dose of FPTP in South Africa (which has a closed list system).

[Tender Branson]

Austria's districts could only partly be used as FPTP-constituencies, because of their very different population-sizes (Graz 260k, Rust 1k). By the way: NRW 2006 (e.g.) had a SPÖ-lead in a big majority of the 121 districts.

Well, yeah, but some districts could be lumped together to create more evenly districts in terms of population ...

[Tender Branson]

Lewis once did a project on Austrian single-member districts:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=84170.0

[Tender Branson]

My memory was wrong: NRW'06 saw as strongest party in the 121 districts: 59 SPÖ, 59 ÖVP, 3 GREENS. So it was even quite equal, yet Rust were (nearly) a rotten borough.

2013 was 56 SPÖ, 50 ÖVP, 7 Greens and 4 FPÖ.

The SPÖ won 4 more districts outright than it won in the PR system, with the ÖVP 3 more.