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

[jaichind]

If Hofer does win will he follow through on this threat to call new elections for the Parliment?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Someone bring back the Hapsburgs...There's nothing they can't fix.

[Tender Branson]

Did Khol try to take credit for the OVP's role in putting in the migrant/refugee quota which might have had a ripple effect in slowing down, for now any way, the wave of migrants coming through the Balkans?  One would think that would have been a positive campaign message toward a lot of the electorate.

Yes, but it was useless. The election today was an allergic reaction of Austrian voters against an SPÖVP government who they think is in power for way too long. They also have enough of Faymann and Mitterlehner's policy changes over the past year. They know exactly that they have no spine when they first supported Merkel and then made a u-turn because the FPÖ trashed them in the polls. Voters simply do not like spineless, clueless politicians - they rather prefer steady politicians with steady policies from the beginning (such as Sebastian Kurz and the FPÖ) and not politicians who turn around like wind vanes. Or as the old Austrian saying goes: "You go to the blacksmith to buy your stuff, and not the blacksmithy (or apprentice)."

If VDB still ends up winning (remember what happened in France last year), I wonder if it would be the biggest comeback margin in a European Presidential election ever.

Yes.

Seems a lot of the electorate is basically saying that they want the cultural, demographic, ethnic, religious makeup of Austria's future to be similar to what it is today and for it not to be changed significantly.  

Yes.

[rob in cal]

  One cool thing about the Hapsburgs is that instead of conquering territory they won it through dynastic marriages instead. I believe the phrase was that the empire grew through the bedroom not the battlefield.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

 One cool thing about the Hapsburgs is that instead of conquering territory they won it through dynastic marriages instead. I believe the phrase was that the empire grew through the bedroom not the battlefield.

"Let others wage war. You, happy Austria, marry!" was the exact quote.

[Tender Branson]

I'm on leave @ Atlas/AAD, but enjoyed your election coverage a lot! My aunt and uncle voted for Hofer, "der einziger Freund von Israel" Will you consider voting for him in the second round, or is it going to be VdB regardless? A Hofer victory might provide a good shock for the inept SPÖVP coalition.

I cannot bring myself to ever vote for an FPÖ candidate, sry.

But VdB is like ... meh.

But I hold my nose and still vote VdB in the runoff.

Most in my family will vote for Hofer though.

[Tender Branson]

Also interesting:

The high Hofer-share in the towns surrounding the major border crossing in Styria (Spielfeld), where 500.000 Middle-Eastern/African asylum seekers passed through Austria into Germany over the past half year.

Hofer already got 48-52% there in the 1st round.

Also, the Innviertel region in Upper Austria - where the German police has created a backlog among immigrants with no valid/fake passports and turned them back to Upper Austria where they were distributed to the towns ...

[RodPresident]

Or in other words:

Of the 43% who voted Griss/Hundstorfer/Khol and Lugner today, 56% disapprove of the government job.

But Hofer just needs 35% of this pool of 43% to get to 50%+ in the runoff ...

You need to remember that Greens aren't in government.
Some Griss voters were tactical voters to stop VdB. But I believe that VdB will win due to higher turnout.

[rob in cal]

    Will the defeated candidates endorse either one of the finalists?  Khol and Lugner for Hofer, Griss and Hundstorfer for VDB?

[Cranberry]

    Will the defeated candidates endorse either one of the finalists?  Khol and Lugner for Hofer, Griss and Hundstorfer for VDB?

So far, none. Lugner has said he will not endorse anyone, Griss says she is thinking about it (but I have a hard time imagining her as endorsing Hofer). Khol and Hundtsorfer respectively are not important, what counts are the endorsements of Faymann and Mitterlehner. The latter has not said anything yet, iirc, but Faymann has said he will vote for Van der Bellen.

[Zanas]

Well, Austria keeps being awful, Part LXVII.

Apart from that, no talks on turnout ? We'd been promised some 70-75 %, and it's just 60%, which is pretty lame in Austrian standards, even if it's actually 6.5 pts better than the last Presidential election of 2010. Clearly demotivation amongst governmental parties' troops, and who'd blame them ?

I wonder if something similar to the French regional election can happen, with a 10-pt increased turnout of broadly decent human beings coming in holding their nose to vote for the remaining candidate who is not an utter xenophobe ? Or has Austria gotten that awful ?

[Sozialliberal]

How the voters of the 2013 legislative election voted in this presidential election
Voter-transition analysis by SORA

SPÖ voters in 2013
32 % Hundstorfer
24 % non-voters
16 % Van der Bellen
13 % Hofer
10 % Griss
3 % Lugner
2 % Khol

ÖVP voters in 2013
34 % Khol
24 % Hofer
18 % Griss
14 % non-voters
7 % Van der Bellen
2 % Hundstorfer
2 % Lugner

FPÖ voters in 2013
86 % Hofer
5 % non-voters
3 % Khol
3 % Griss
2 % Van der Bellen
1 % Lugner
1 % Hundstorfer

Green voters in 2013
69 % Van der Bellen
21 % Griss
8 % non-voters
1 % Khol
1 % Hofer
1 % Lugner
0 % Hundstorfer

Team Stronach voters in 2013
46 % Hofer
35 % Griss
12 % non-voters
2 % Hundstorfer
2 % Lugner
2 % Van der Bellen
1 % Khol

NEOS voters in 2013
48 % Griss
35 % Van der Bellen
10 % non-voters
3 % Hofer
2 % Lugner
1 % Khol
0 % Hundstorfer

Voters of other parties in 2013
31 % Griss
23 % Hofer
17 % Van der Bellen
16 % non-voters
5 % Khol
4 % Hundstorfer
3 % Lugner

Non-voters in 2013
87 % non-voters
5 % Van der Bellen
3 % Hofer
3 % Griss
1 % Lugner
1 % Hundstorfer
1 % Khol

[jaichind]

Interesting that so many of Team Stronach 2013 voters went to Griss.   I guess for the second round they will vote Hofer.  The other bloc of votes that Hofer will go after will be Khol voters of course.  It seems unlikely NEOS voters for Griss will go Hofer. 

[aross]

The other bloc of votes that Hofer will go after will be Khol voters of course.

Which will be harder than it seems. There exists a decent section of right-wing (leaving aside the remaining moderates, who would never consider Hofer anyway) ÖVP voters - and they are loyal ÖVP voters, so they will be disproportionately represented among Khol voters - who think the FPÖ are dirty uncouth Plebeians with ideas above their station and would never vote for them. That doesn't mean they are prepared to vote for the left, of course - but if any candidate could convince them to do so, it would surely be Van der Bellen.

[jaichind]

The other bloc of votes that Hofer will go after will be Khol voters of course.

Which will be harder than it seems. There exists a decent section of right-wing (leaving aside the remaining moderates, who would never consider Hofer anyway) ÖVP voters - and they are loyal ÖVP voters, so they will be disproportionately represented among Khol voters - who thinks the FPÖ are dirty uncouth Plebeians with ideas above their station and would never vote for them. That doesn't mean they are prepared to vote for the left, of course - but if any candidate could convince them to do so, it would surely be Van der Bellen.

That sounds logical.  Of course for Van der Bellen, his job is to get the SPÖ vote, especially those that voted in 2013 but not in the first round of 2016 and hope that most of the Griss votes comes over to him.

[jaichind]

it is interesting how similar the second round of the Austrian Prez election is to the second round of the Peru Prez election.  Both were won by a large margin by a controversial candidate with a very high floor and a fairly low ceiling.   Looking at the gap between the front runner and the second place finisher from the first round (18.85% in Peru, 16.02% in Austria) seems to indicate that there is no way the front-runner can lose.  Yet the likelihood of higher turnout and the low ceiling for the said front-runner makes it very possible for such an unlikely upset to take place in the second round.  As I commented in the Peru thread, I could not find any cases of a two round election where such a deficit was made up.   I was given a couple of examples where a greater deficit was made up but they are all based on extreme ethnic polarization which does not seem to be present in either Peru or Austria.

[rob in cal]

  I found one small village where the SPO received no votes, Untertilliach in Lienz district of Tyrol, with a voter turnout of 99 people.  I wonder if there are some zero vote OVP places, but maybe not as likely as they are stronger in rural areas.
  Also, do we have the socio-economic class breakdown of the vote in the exit polls?

[Tender Branson]

Today, all postal ballots were counted.

Which means the final result of the 1st round is:

35.1% Norbert Hofer (FPÖ)
21.3% Alexander Van der Bellen (Greens)
18.9% Irmgard Griss (Indy)
11.3% Rudolf Hundstorfer (SPÖ)
11.1% Andreas Khol (ÖVP)
  2.3% Richard Lugner

Turnout: 68.5%

http://wahl16.bmi.gv.at

...

Van der Bellen was able to flip 3 districts to his side with the postal ballot count:

Linz City, Mödling (=wealthy, southern Vienna suburbs), Meidling (a district of Vienna).

[Tender Branson]

Another thing I realized:

With the postal ballot count, Hofer dropped to 27.7% in Vienna.

Which is much lower than what the FPÖ got in the state election in Vienna last year: 30.8%

Which makes Vienna the only state in which Hofer did not reach a record FPÖ result yesterday.

It also means lower turnout hurt Hofer: The state election had 75% turnout, yesterday's election had just 64%.

This confirms the trend that higher turnout is good for the FPÖ and SPÖ alike.

[Tender Branson]

The postal vote in detail:

28.1% VdB (Greens)
25.6% Hofer (FPÖ)
21.9% Griss (Indy)
12.0% Hundstorfer (SPÖ)
10.7% Khol (ÖVP)
  1.7% Lugner (Indy)

Total postal votes counted: 543.216
Total postal votes requested: 641.975
Percentage of requested postal votes returned: 84.6%

[Tender Branson]

Looking even more into it, Hofer didn't even get a record FPÖ-result yesterday in Vorarlberg.

He got 30.0% yesterday, but the FPÖ got 30.2% in the 1999 federal election.

...

Also, no record results for Hofer in Carinthia. The FPÖ under Haider and the BZÖ got over 38% and 44% there ...

[Tender Branson]

I wonder if the pollsters will even release a single runoff poll, after their mega-debacle yesterday.

[Tender Branson]

Numerous crisis meetings in the SPÖ and ÖVP today, after their devastating losses yesterday.

Especially in the SPÖ, there are now several important voices who want Faymann gone.

Manwhile, Faymann remains glued to his seat and says he won't go anywhere ...

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

LOL, what an unrealistic story you came up with, Tender

[Tender Branson]

LOL, what an unrealistic story you came up with, Tender