Austrian Elections & Politics 3.0 - Parliamentary Election: Oct. 15

[ApatheticAustrian]

Btw I don't expect Kurz to end up at 35% . He's  the favorite but he will most likely end up around 30%.

he is going to become a junior partner in a FPÖ coalition....otherwise i don't know why the FPÖ should play junior partner.

[ApatheticAustrian]

How come NEOS members have so much sympathy for Kurz? Aren't NEOS a standard socialliberal party with very lax attitudes to immigration while Kurz is seen as quite tough on migration? But maybe being young and beautiful is enough for them.

kurz is creating a hype around his own personality and i guess economical issues trump everything else.....besides that many obvious NEOs voters came from the övp in the first place.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Very independent.

austria is still a very royal country regarding tributes and badges and stuff.... if you are doing something official over a longer period of time, you can't dodge the pins and awards which are thrown your way.

[ApatheticAustrian]

it's unlikely but since kurz was a minister for years, he is a known quantity and he won't "govern" till the election so he could only lose support cause spö/fpö voters realize, they actually don't like the ÖVP or campaign issues and tv debates are going bad for kurz.....

the fpö has started attacking him as the most important target and if i read the polls correctly kurz has started slipping against kern anyway. (spö has also improved, which means this is mostly about conservative-friendly voters who have switched to the FPÖ...lots of styrian voters i guess)

[ApatheticAustrian]

they don't mean their welfare promises literally? gosh, who would have guessed?

[ApatheticAustrian]

yes, it's outdated.

[ApatheticAustrian]

it must be sooo frustrating for strache et al, that they are outflanked by someone playing a centrist, who wants to subdue them in a coalition.

[ApatheticAustrian]

this could kill the fpö in nearly every south-eastern federal state.

anyway...."the states" are preventing the national government from getting anything done since....ever.

[ApatheticAustrian]

@tender....kill cause the south east got not no patience for the FPÖ ending all of their big welfare promises, just to make kurz happy.

this implement hurts fpö voters the most. can't imagine carinthia,  vienna, burgenland, styria liking such an extreme idea, maybe not even big-spending lower austria.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i am btw at a loss at this point, where the many voters of the SPÖ are coming from....

according to local polls, the SPÖ has become a minor party inf upper austria and salzburg, has lost big-scale in styria, wasn't big to start with in the west and lower austria and there are not a lot of citizens in carinthia and burgenland.

according to new polls, even vienna is trending hard to the fpö and still the spö seems - according to national polls - totally able to reach at least the second place and finish closer to 30 than 20 points.

if this is all kern's work, he is a real political talent.

[ApatheticAustrian]

A big city trending towards a right-wing party is such a foreign thought to me haha

but really though is kern attracting some spo voters or is he just consolidating so much of the fpo vote that he is taking a huge lead

well, in austria it's not just a city, it's THE city (like in..the only real one) and our conservatives have shrinked since decades to the point of no return ....atm they are polling at about 10 points in vienna.

so it's a combination of:

- no serious conservative competition or alternative.

- vienna fpö being economically a social(ist) party, promising goods and higher wages/pensions (you name it)...which sounds good for working-class voters who got disappointed since globalization.

- the spö has governed without a break since many MANY decades and there is ofc a layer of corruption - like everywhere without alternation.

- and there are ofc the many many many many small and little frustrations in daily life about foreigner, refugees, etc...with the additional effect, that the fpö is not against foreigners in general but tends to praise and court voters from ex-yugoslavia, which are a big voting bloc in vienna.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Why do all these small parties even try, given that there is a 4% electoral threshold?

cynical me would say - at least regarding the "migrants party" - to deny their vote to the other parties.

those turkish-linked parties are terrible.....nihilism meets relativism.

[ApatheticAustrian]

I disagree with Tender regarding the scale of the problems.... (my public school was good enough anyway ) and vienna is building A LOT of new apartments (my district alone adds about a quarter of its population during the next years) ....but in general that's the gist.

mixture of real problems and imagined ones, combined with the fact, that the SPÖ isn't able to subsidize all their voters anymore as in the past and the fpö vienna promises everything and nothing.

it is going to be a key question this october, if the 40 points fpö and 24 points spö poll was even close to reality.

[ApatheticAustrian]

spö losses make sense....the last election was kind of a "coalition" election against the fpö.

at some point the fpö is going to govern again, it would just be interesting IFFFFFFFFFF the fpö is still going to be large after 2-3 years of governing.

[ApatheticAustrian]

this is sheer madness.

and there wouldn't be any wage increases ofc.

such things can't be forced, they happen automatically if the economy is booming over some time.

at the same time, austrians would get muuuuch fewer services from government....we just don't know who are the unlucky fools.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i guess we are going to see a split between the city FPÖ and the rural FPÖ.

conservative fpö voters ofc like tax cuts and bla - but the new fpö voters in styria and vienna are not going to approve those and are part of the citizens who are most in need of social welfare.

[ApatheticAustrian]

 Tender, do you think a OVP-FPO coalition would have a specific migrant quota target? If so it would have to be pretty low, for the FPO to show its voters that going into coalition had accomplished something on the issue.

A very low one for asylum seekers (maybe 3.000 per year) and a shift towards a Canadian-style system for high-skilled immigrants. Other than those immigrants from the EU, Austria currently attracts primarily low-skilled immigrants from outside the EU.

you think the FPÖ would support an immigration system which gives high-skilled people a good chance to escape the austrian system of bureaucratic mobbing?

would surely surprise me.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i think VdB would object to SOME ministers and secretaries.

like the conservative candidate thomas klestil also did 18 years ago.

if i was strache, i wouldn't try to become vice chancellor anyway.

people like hofer (well, in fact he is a hard hard hard HARDLINER with a soft voice like corbyn but we are goin to ignore that cause of his popularity) and haimbuchner surely would be acceptable, gudenus and  others would be much more in danger, imho.


and HALLELUJA - mister lopatka can't be removed from our politics fast enough.

[ApatheticAustrian]

What is the likelihood of a ÖVP-NEOS-Green coalition?

not likely.

the numbers aren't there and the neos would be happy to prevent getting sacked form the parliament.

[ApatheticAustrian]

worst övp poll in some time.

[ApatheticAustrian]

this coalition would only make sense in a country without real alternatives. if any far-right populist party gety 30% of the vote in a parliamentarian system, they are going to govern.

[ApatheticAustrian]

ofc to make sure, the övp wins an election - there is no other reason.

[ApatheticAustrian]

a shame.

wallentin would have been the major krone-candidate and could have used his large krone-fanbase.

lugar is a goner, good for the fpö.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Happy to see the austrian anti-fa still on the right side oh history when it counts. The alliance of islamists and the far-left in some countries is worrisome enough.

[ApatheticAustrian]

I am shocked to hear how bad the party is treating Pilz.

Makes my vote bullet-proof SPÖ this time, i guess.