Austrian Elections & Politics 5.0 (Burgenland state election - January 26)

[Tender Branson]

I estimate that between 1.05 and 1.15 million postal ballots have been issued, up from the previous record-high in 2017 (0.89 million).

That would be a 25% increase and because 90% of them are returned, it would mean that 1/5 votes out of the 5 million expected votes will be a postal vote.

[Tender Branson]

The ORF has decided to interview all 8 lead candidates ... on a couch.

That's typically Austrian:



 

 

 

 

© ORF

[Tender Branson]

The ORF debate was watched by 1.3 million people yesterday and 1.5 million at peak times.

That’s every 4th to 5th voter and ca. 50 million in US terms.

[Tender Branson]

I have some feeling Pilz might get back in, despite polling at 1-2%, the way he’s pwning Kurz lately. It has to resonate with some leftist voters I guess ...

https://mobile.twitter.com/Anpatzer/status/1177464793176784896

https://mobile.twitter.com/Anpatzer/status/1177441901412093952

https://mobile.twitter.com/Anpatzer/status/1176755751160877056

[Tender Branson]

I estimate that between 1.05 and 1.15 million postal ballots have been issued, up from the previous record-high in 2017 (0.89 million).

That would be a 25% increase and because 90% of them are returned, it would mean that 1/5 votes out of the 5 million expected votes will be a postal vote.

1.071.000 absentee ballots have been issued, compared with 889.000 in 2017:

BMI Link

Vienna had the highest increase with +30%, followed by Salzburg.

Styria only had a 10% increase.

[Tender Branson]

With those numbers, we should be looking if turnout on Sunday tops 65% with all precincts counted.

If that is the case, another 15% will be added with the postal ballots (assuming a 90% return rate) and turnout would top 80% again.

Anything below 65% in the precincts on Sunday would point to lower turnout than 2017 ...

[Tender Branson]

From „exit pollster“ SORA:

Postal ballot requests in urban areas compared with 2017: +25%
Postal ballot requests in rural areas compared with 2017: +18%

I would not read too much into it though: rural voters typically vote strongly on Election Day, so this does not point to a demobilization there yet compared to urban areas.

[Tender Branson]

Did you know that if you draw a penis, boobs, butt, middle-finger, smiley, swastika, cartoon or whatever into the column of a party on your ballot, your vote will still count for that party ?

The law says that "the voter has to indicate his/her choice clearly for a party", but doesn't state that checking the box has to be done with a [X].

You can also cross out 7 of the 8 parties and leave the Greens for example blank. Your vote counts for the Greens.

The BMI has sent out a brochure of sample ballots, which show the ballots that count and others that would not count:

PDF Link

[Tender Branson]

The weather is expected to be pretty good tomorrow, maybe a bit misty until noon, but then quite warm (18-25°C) and mostly sunny.

Only in the late evening some showers are expected - but polls already close at 5pm anyway.

This should be good news for turnout.

[Tender Branson]

Greens eye power in Austrian election

When 6.4 million Austrians go to the polls on Sunday in a general election, they have a choice between more of the same – a coalition of conservatives and far-right populists – or something different. After polls close at 5pm on Sunday, ex-chancellor Sebastian Kurz – whose conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) is leading in the polls at 34 per cent – could reactivate his last alliance, the extremist Freedom Party (FPÖ).

But with prosecutors investigating the ex-FPÖ leader, and rumours of more revelations to come, Kurz may yet pivot away from his populist former allies. That’s where the Green Party comes in. At a final rally in Vienna’s Sigmund Freud park, Austrian Greens were quietly confident the growing global climate protest would catalyse a voter shift in their direction on Sunday.

Their dreams of returning to parliament – and perhaps even power – were triggered by a secret video last May showing the then FPÖ leader promising state contracts for party donations. That collapsed the populist leader’s 18-month coalition with the conservatives. Austrian Greens are impatient to get back into parliament, and open to the idea of entering government for the first time, but wary of selling out cheaply to Kurz.


@skrautwaschl

In the election campaign, riding the Greta wave, the Green Party has pushed an eco-social tax reform that balances green goals with social justice: it rewards environmentally friendly behaviour and lower-income families, for instance, while hitting wealthier SUV drivers.

“We’re open for talks with Kurz but his party has a long way to go to be a coalition partner for us,” said Werner Kogler, Green Party leader, on Friday. As well as climate goals, he wants the ÖVP leader to retreat from the anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric he lifted from the FPÖ in recent years. “The ÖVP would have to bring back the Christian, social and human dignity elements of their politics they’ve dumped in power with the populists.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/greens-eye-power-in-austrian-election-1.4032912

[Tender Branson]

How does the vote count work ?

* The 10.000 precincts all close at different times: there are small towns where precincts close at 11am already. Some like in Vorarlberg at 1pm, most at 2-4pm and some at 5pm.

* Which means ~40% of the vote will already be counted when all polls have to close at 5pm (mostly from the rural areas).

* All votes cast on Sunday will be counted by about 7-9pm, so we should have a "final" result by then.

* Postal ballots are counted in 3 ways: a handful of voters take their postal ballot to their own precinct and vote with it. Those votes will already be counted tomorrow.

* The vast majority of postal votes (930.000) will be counted on Monday. Those are the ones that were mailed back.

* Another 35.000 or so absentee ballots will be counted on Thursday. Those are the ones that were cast in a precinct other than the own.

[DL]

Looking at some of the predictions and possible last minute trends, what if the FPO does really badly and falls to say 17% and the Pilz Party gets over the 4% hurdle and the OVP doesn’t get the gains they were expecting and is stuck in the low 30s. Is it possible that OVP/FPO falls short of a majority and so that coalition is no longer even viable

[Oryxslayer]

Looking at some of the predictions and possible last minute trends, what if the FPO does really badly and falls to say 17% and the Pilz Party gets over the 4% hurdle and the OVP doesn’t get the gains they were expecting and is stuck in the low 30s. Is it possible that OVP/FPO falls short of a majority and so that coalition is no longer even viable

Whenever you have to use that many ifs, it's a low possibility. We won't really know until long after the vote who truly won, everything is going to come down to who Kurz wants to work with, and who would accept the offer. OVP-FPO, OVP-SPO, and let's call it Jamaica could all have potential majorities.

[DL]

Sounds like what Kurz really wants is another OVP/FPO government but with his party being much stronger and the FPO much weaker than before.

[Oryxslayer]

Sounds like what Kurz really wants is another OVP/FPO government but with his party being much stronger and the FPO much weaker than before.

Yes, he wanted a castrated FPO as his Ally, but the FPO may not want to end up as free Kurz votes with little to show for it in terms of meaningful portfolios. There's also a line of thought that says getting a agreement from the greens to back your constitutional amendments could result in the needed supermajority in the upper chamber sometime during govf, assuming the FPO remain committed to stuff like the debt break.

[Tender Branson]

Looking at some of the predictions and possible last minute trends, what if the FPO does really badly and falls to say 17% and the Pilz Party gets over the 4% hurdle and the OVP doesn’t get the gains they were expecting and is stuck in the low 30s. Is it possible that OVP/FPO falls short of a majority and so that coalition is no longer even viable

I don't think this will happen, because ÖVP-FPÖ are nowadays 2 communicating vessels.

Virtually all the support the FPÖ would lose tomorrow, would go to the ÖVP. Under normal circumstances. Say, if the FPÖ drops to 17%, the ÖVP would get 35% or more.

It would take a massive backlash from conservative/nationalist "loan" voters of 2017 (the ones who have an issue with ÖVP-FPÖ's constant corruption and other scandals).

I would only rate the chances of ÖVP-FPÖ losing their majority to around 30%.

[DL]

I would only rate the chances of ÖVP-FPÖ losing their majority to around 30%.

To me 30% chance of OVP-FPO losing their majority is much more of a chance than i would ever have thought possible. Would the Greens be willing to back an OVP government or would their voters revolt over that? Would we go back to the comfortable old shoe of a OVP-SPO "grand coalition"?

[Tender Branson]

I would only rate the chances of ÖVP-FPÖ losing their majority to around 30%.

To me 30% chance of OVP-FPO losing their majority is much more of a chance than i would ever have thought possible. Would the Greens be willing to back an OVP government or would their voters revolt over that? Would we go back to the comfortable old shoe of a OVP-SPO "grand coalition"?

It depends to which Greens you are talking to ...

I would say that most Greens prefer something else than an ÖVP-Green-NEOS coalition, namely an SPÖ-Greens-NEOS-Pilz coalition. But that is something which will not happen mathematically (unless my scenario above becomes reality) and then there's the problem that we never had a 3-party coalition before, not to mention a 4-party coalition.

Then you have the Vienna Greens and the more younger, new FFF voters - who are strongly opposed to joining a Kurz-government. If you talk with the more rural, older Green voters (like myself), you will find more voices for such a government - because it would also prevent another ÖVP-FPÖ coalition.

If the Greens refuse to take political power with Kurz, they will also be held accountable for enabling another ÖVP-FPÖ coalition ...

[DL]

In other words the Greens will have learned to "be careful what you wish for"...actually having the balamce of power in a minority parliament can put a party in a very difficult position. In some ways its easier to have no power and be able to just oppose everything and speak to the desires of your voters.

[Cranberry]

Sounds like what Kurz really wants is another OVP/FPO government but with his party being much stronger and the FPO much weaker than before.

Yes, he wanted a castrated FPO as his Ally, but the FPO may not want to end up as free Kurz votes with little to show for it in terms of meaningful portfolios. There's also a line of thought that says getting a agreement from the greens to back your constitutional amendments could result in the needed supermajority in the upper chamber sometime during govf, assuming the FPO remain committed to stuff like the debt break.

Seeing as the Greens at present have only two Bundesräte (one each from Vienna and OÖ), but the SPÖ has 21, more than a third of all 61 Bundesräte, they themselves can continue to block constitutional laws. That of course completely ignores the simple fact that the Greens would never support policies such as a constitutional debt break - they are a party of the left, especially at the national level. ÖVP+Greens works on a state level in the West, where the ÖVP as natural party of government is more moderate and the Greens have historic ties to that party; it never will on the national level where both actors are further to their respective ideological sides than the state parties of Vorarlberg or Tirol.

[Tender Branson]

Austria elects a new parliament today, the 27th since WW2.

183 seats in the Nationalrat are at stake and a new government will have to be formed.

The threshold to enter parliament is 4%, or a basic mandate in one of the regional election districts.


© APA, a voter with her passport and voter information card.

Polls are open already in the most towns and will close no later than 5pm (11am Eastern).

A first projection will be made a few minutes later by SORA.

Results can then be found on ORF.at, in APA's results widgets or on the Interior Ministry's official results page:

https://wahl19.bmi.gv.at

2017 results are here:

https://wahl17.bmi.gv.at


© APA, the 6 frontrunners of the major parties.

Have fun !

[Tender Branson]

I have already voted by postal ballot:

[X] Greens


© Twitter (Greens)

[Tender Branson]

Historical results:


© APA/ORF

Very sad that the SPÖ, who was at 51% exactly 40 years ago, could end up with 20% today ...

[Tender Branson]

First sporadic reports about turnout on the precinct workers Twitter feed (#beifunk) and APA's live blog suggest "average" to "brisk" voting.

The SPÖ's Pamela Rendi-Wagner was the first major candidate to vote today:


© APA/Schlager

[Tender Branson]

The current satellite picture shows nasty clouds in the South (FPÖ strongholds), but sunny everywhere else (especially in the ÖVP areas) ...