Austrian Election - October 1, 2006

[minionofmidas]

Will SPÖ and Greens form a coalition if they win?
Who do you support?

Also, I can't quite believe it's been four years already... time sure flies...

[minionofmidas]

Who is Hans-Peter Martin?

[minionofmidas]

New NEWS-Market poll out:

Conservatives (ÖVP): 39%
Social Democrats (SPÖ): 35%
Greens: 11%
Freedom Party (FPÖ): 6%
List HPM: 5%
Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ): 3%
Others: 1%

Also: Today the Greens came up with a proposal to abolish life without parole in Austria. They want the highest possible prison sentence to be 20 years. Also it should be possible to release prisoners after 2/3 of their sentence. It should reduce costs and prevent overcrowded prisons. Exceptions should be made with repeat offenders. They also favor community service for criminals. All other major parties have opposed their plans immediatly.

To add this: In Austria "life without parole" doesn´t neccesarily mean that you are in prison for the rest of your life. The avarage time for life imprisonment is 21 years. Currently some 160 people in Austria serve "Lifelong sentences."

So Life then, not Life without Parole.

[minionofmidas]

Greens 322
KPÖ 321
SPÖ 181
ÖVP -81
BZÖ -141
FPÖ -230

[minionofmidas]

You dirty rotten Commie you!

[minionofmidas]

It's a Communist invasion!

[minionofmidas]

For States:
FPÖ 85
ÖVP 75
BZÖ 60
SPÖ -65
Grüne -105
KPÖ -185

[minionofmidas]

There was talk at one point that BZÖ might be in even if they have less than 4% due to winning a "primary mandate" in Carinthia... can anybody tell me how Austria's seat distribution works exactly? (Of course, it's academic now since they are over 4% after all.)

[minionofmidas]

...unlike the BZÖ.

Two mandates? Must have been in Vienna. The Greens won Vienna's Josefstadt, Mariahilf, and Neubau wards, and also came mighty close in Währing and Alsengrund.

Best turnout - Burgenland 84.1%
Worst - Vienna 65.2%

Best SPÖ - Burgenland 45.3%
Worst - Vorarlberg 18.8%

Best ÖVP - Tyrol 43.9%
Worst - Vienna 20.8%

Best FPÖ - Vienna 14.4%
Worst - Carinthia 7.3% (lol)

Best Greens - Vienna 17.1%
Worst - Burgenland 5.5%

Best BZÖ - Carintha 25.4%
Second - Tyrol or Vorarlberg 3.3%
Worst - Burgenland 1.7%

Best HPM - Vorarlberg 7.8% (just over 4% in Tyrol)
Worst - Styria or Carinthia 1.9%

Best KPÖ - Styria 1.9%
Worst - Burgenland 0.5%

[minionofmidas]

Vienna has some pretty remarkable voting patterns...
Here's the % voting Left of center by Bezirk (SPÖ, Greens, Martin, KPÖ)
city 62.4%
VII Neubau 68.2%
XV Rudolfsheim - Fünfhaus 67.3%
V Margareten 66.9%
II Leopoldstadt 66.8%
XX Brigittenau 66.4%
XVI Ottakring 65.1%
XXII Donaustadt 65.1%
VI Mariahilf 64.9%
XI Simmering 64.5%
XXI Floridsdorf 63.6%
XII Meidling 63.1%
X Favoriten 62.7%
III Landstraße 62.3%
IX Alsengrund 62.1%
XXIII Liesing 61.0%
VIII Josefstadt 60.8%
XVII Hernals 60.6%
IV Wieden 60.2%
XIV Penzing 60.1%
XVIII Währing 55.1%
XIX Döbling 52.7%
XIII Hietzing 51.3%
I Innere Stadt 47.9%

Looks pretty uniform except for those four outliers at the bottom, doesn`t it now? Well, compare the following table. ÖVP+Greens.

city 37.9%
I Innere Stadt 65.5%
VIII Josefstadt 61.6%
XVIII Währing 59.6%
VII Neubau 57.7%
IV Wieden 56.3%
VI Mariahilf 55.8%
IX Alsengrund 55.5%
XIII Hietzing 55.4%
XIX Döbling 51.8%
III Landstraße 46.5%
XVII Hernals 44.7%
V Margareten 42.4%
XIV Penzing 41.6%
II Leopoldstadt 37.7%
XXIII Liesing 37.5%
XV Rudolfsheim - Fünfhaus 34.8%
XVI Ottakring 34.8%
XII Meidling 32.9%
XX Brigittenau 28.9%
XXII Donaustadt 28.4%
XXI Floridsdorf 26.4%
X Favoriten 24.0%
XI Simmering 21.9%

ÖVP and Greens tend to do well in the same parts of the city (more or less. Except for the Ist, the Greens tend to be stronger compared to the ÖVP in the more central areas.) and the correlation between SPÖ and FPÖ is actually even stronger.
Isn't this city any BNPer's or any Labourite LD-and-Green-hater's wet dream?

What's even better, divide the city into Blackgreen and Redblue parts, and you get something of a yin-and-yang shape.

[minionofmidas]

Is either a SPÖ-Green-BZÖ or a ÖVP-Green-BZÖ coalition politically possible?

No.

Or so one would think. But I saw the ORF live discussion with all the party leaders (not all of it. I missed the Green. ) and these options didn't occur to anyone, unlike o/c ÖVP-BZÖ-FPÖ and - shock - SPÖ-FPÖ-Greens. Apparently that latter combination exists in the ORF's governing body! Although Gusenbauer made it very clear he doesn't even like its existence there.

[minionofmidas]

Race is tightening:

New Gallup Poll - 31-08-2006:

ÖVP: 37%
SPÖ: 35%
Greens: 11%
FPÖ: 7%
BZÖ: 4%
HPM: 4%
Others: 2%

I hope that BZO will get 5% and will be in the parliament. I don't want a false left win.

Instead we technically got a false right win (although o/c I couldn't seriously picture a SPÖ-Green-HPM-KPÖ coalition, and I don't think anyone else could. Still, those four parties did poll over 50.00% of the vote.)

[minionofmidas]

Good for the ÖVP then.  Given the way that military contracts are usually set up, once you sink some money in, it usually is better to go ahead and finish the contract.  Dropping the Eurofighter now only makes sense if the Luftstreitkräfte is going to stop operating fighter aircraft altogether.

Which, of course, for a small country that couldn't defend itself anyways, is exactly the only sensible option.

[minionofmidas]

I seem to recall that SPÖ, Greens and FPÖ also collaborate on the state-owned broadcaster's supervisory board...

[minionofmidas]

Are there any important (besides the obvious one) differences between the post-Haider FPÖ and what it was like when he was running it?

Uh - compared to the eighties and very early 90s, or compared with later?

[minionofmidas]

Are there any important (besides the obvious one) differences between the post-Haider FPÖ and what it was like when he was running it?

Uh - compared to the eighties and very early 90s, or compared with later?

Later

Not much. They lost a power-interested standardish conservative wing, but that was never very relevant in terms of the voter base anyhow.

[minionofmidas]

Well, they were.

[minionofmidas]

Actually, it probably wouldn't hurt the SPD much, if at all. (It could hurt the Greens somewhat more.) Most of the people who profess to totally hate the GDR and therefore would not vote for the SPD if it governed with the Left, vote for the CDU (which in 1990 annexed a good chunk of the GDR party system...) anyways. And the ties between the current Left and the old SED are pretty tenuous in many ways.

The main reasons why a Red-Red-Green coalition was never really seen as an option in 2005 are:
Schröder hates Lafontaine.
Lafontaine hates Schröder.
Probably most influential SPD and Green politicos were sore at having their votes "stolen", and also feeling unfairly attacked.
Anyone in the Left with any sense of realism knew that, with the party fusion between PDS and WASG not even formalized yet (still isn't, technically), and with such a negative campaign/lack of working positive concepts on their own part, they'd very quickly fall into the trap where they're basically just propping up a government on the same old course, and seen as sellout by their voters. Who would drift back to abstention or the SPD.

[minionofmidas]

Vorarlberg:

ÖVP: 54,9%
SPÖ: 16,9%
FPÖ: 13,0%
Greens: 10,2%

Current opinion polls for the Vorarlberg 2009 elections:

SPÖ: 50%
ÖVP: 17%
Greens: 14%
FPÖ: 10%
BZÖ: 3%
Others: 6%

What has the ÖVP state government done to the people of Voralberg that its support has plummeted so significantly?  My guess is there must have been a major exposing of corruption or other big scandal of some kind.

My guess is that the SPÖ and ÖVP figures in the poll are transposed.