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

[Lechasseur]

When will the next election be?

[Lechasseur]

  Whats frustrating about this is that Kurz seemed pleased with the overall government performance of the OVP FPO coalition, and the collapse was not brought about by unbridgeable differences but rather Strache's stupidity.
    In the coming campaign Kurz will likely defend his record as chancellor, but that record is inextricably tied to the FPO, so the more he praises it, the more he also indirectly praises the FPO to an extent anyway.  
     Under Hofer I would think the FPO would have a good chance of alot of damage control, as he strikes me as one of their more stable leaders. Just how many FPO voters will desert the party? and vote for who, the OVP which just ended the coalition?
    Oh, and what about the direct democracy proposal? Did that ever make it through parliament?

ÖVP-FPÖ only wanted to pass this in parliament at the end of their term, in 2022, according to their coalition contract.

All of this is meaningless now, because ÖVP-NEOS-Greens will likely shelf it (because of the Greens and the ÖVP was also not really a big fan of it either).

The ÖVP isn't the CDU, I don't see Kurz going into a coalition with NEOS and Greens.

And frankly I doubt they'd have the necessary seats to form a government anyway. If the ÖVP doesn't win a majority by itself à la 2002 and if they don't renew their coalition with the FPÖ after the election, I think they'd go into coalition with the SPÖ, not NEOS or Greens.

And strategically I think it would be incredibly stupid for ÖVP to enter a coalition with NEOS and the Greens, it would give the FPÖ and opening again and they'd encounter the same issues as the CDU in Germany who are bleeding their rightwing.

[Lechasseur]

With the Greens sure, but an ÖVP-NEOS coalition I think wouldn't hurt the ÖVP that much, just like CDU-FDP didn't hurt the CDU that much while the endless CDU-SPD coalitions did

Agreed, I was more thinking about entering coalition with the GREENS in particular. OVP/NEOS would be fine, but OVP/Greens I think would lead to a meltdown for the Greens and would have the OVP finish 3rd behind the SPO and the FPO in 2024 (or whenever the next election after 2019 would take place), nobody would like that type of coalition.

[Lechasseur]

  Whats frustrating about this is that Kurz seemed pleased with the overall government performance of the OVP FPO coalition, and the collapse was not brought about by unbridgeable differences but rather Strache's stupidity.
    In the coming campaign Kurz will likely defend his record as chancellor, but that record is inextricably tied to the FPO, so the more he praises it, the more he also indirectly praises the FPO to an extent anyway.  
     Under Hofer I would think the FPO would have a good chance of alot of damage control, as he strikes me as one of their more stable leaders. Just how many FPO voters will desert the party? and vote for who, the OVP which just ended the coalition?
    Oh, and what about the direct democracy proposal? Did that ever make it through parliament?

ÖVP-FPÖ only wanted to pass this in parliament at the end of their term, in 2022, according to their coalition contract.

All of this is meaningless now, because ÖVP-NEOS-Greens will likely shelf it (because of the Greens and the ÖVP was also not really a big fan of it either).

The ÖVP isn't the CDU, I don't see Kurz going into a coalition with NEOS and Greens.

And frankly I doubt they'd have the necessary seats to form a government anyway. If the ÖVP doesn't win a majority by itself à la 2002 and if they don't renew their coalition with the FPÖ after the election, I think they'd go into coalition with the SPÖ, not NEOS or Greens.

And strategically I think it would be incredibly stupid for ÖVP to enter a coalition with NEOS and the Greens, it would give the FPÖ and opening again and they'd encounter the same issues as the CDU in Germany who are bleeding their rightwing.

Kurz could definitely go for ÖVP-NEOS-Greens.

That's because we will see a much different Kurz after the election: Once he has won the election with ca. 35-40% and NEOS/Greens with about 8% each, he will say "Immigration is not the main issue any longer and the policies I implemented with the FPÖ over the past 2 years have been enough to decrease new asylum requests to a much lower level and we can focus on the future now under a strengthened and dominating ÖVP".

And such a coalition would probably be quite popular too (see Salzburg here), because voters don't see it as polarizing as ÖVP-FPÖ.

Sounds like the ÖVP is no better than the German CDU after all.

I'm back on the FPÖ train then.

[Lechasseur]

Which party is Iris Rauskala of?

[Lechasseur]

Which party is Iris Rauskala of?

Same question for the new chancellor. And what were their roles previously?

[Lechasseur]

New Demox Research poll published in the „Presse“ (n=1.000, conducted in the past few days):

37-38% ÖVP
22-23% SPÖ
18-19% FPÖ
10-11% NEOS
    8-9% Greens
    1-3% Others

2017 result: 31.5% ÖVP, 27% SPÖ, 26% FPÖ, 5% NEOS, 4% Greens, 6.5% Others

https://diepresse.com/home/innenpolitik/5637522/Warten-auf-das-Kabinett-Bierlein

If those were the election results we could see an OVP/NEOS coalition and the FPO could be discarded. It would be like an Austrian version of a standard issue CDU/FDP coalition. Someone enlighten me as to whether ist fair to describe NEOS as basically an Austrian version of the FDP

I believe NEOS is more openly pro-EU (not that FDP is anti-EU in the slightest, but iirc NEOS openly wants the "united states of Europe") and more left wing overall? (both economically and socially)

Yeah that's the impression I have too. FDP seem to be a more classical liberal party like Venstre, VVD or MR while NEOS seem to be a more social-liberal party à la D66.

[Lechasseur]

Is there enough time for Strache to found a new party (or rename an existing one) and contest the election? I'm thinking of a scenario where he gets kicked out of FPO and then he founds a new party.

Frankly I don't see why he would. His political career is over anyway, and I don't think he has any reason to try to get revenge on the FPO.