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

[rob in cal]

One thing is that the gap between new asylum seekers and deportations is narrowing significantly, and might reach a crossover point this year. I love the graphics in the link btw, with the airplanes especially. Looks like one extra deportation flight per month in 2018 vs 2017.

[rob in cal]

  Would there be any pressure on the OVP Vorarlberg Party to join with the FPO in a coalition, as this is the federal model?

[rob in cal]

    Tender, in your area do you see lots of foreign workers?  Looks like Hungarians and Rumanians and other East Europeans predominate.  Do you see this throughout Austria, or more just in the big urban areas?

[rob in cal]

  Just keep the deportation numbers rising, new asylum requests downward and I think most FPO voters would be happy. Also, it would be nice to see the new direct democracy law, in spite of its high signature threshold, activated, but of course thats not to allowed until after this parliament is over, IIRC.

[rob in cal]

  Tender, how do the various parties feel about their results in  the Salzburg area elections?

[rob in cal]

  Tender, I wonder where other eastern Europeans would fit in the poll, like Czechs, Hungarians and Poles. Probably in the high single digits?

[rob in cal]

 and with new elections the question is, what if the results are fairly similar to the last ones?

[rob in cal]

   If Kurz feels this should derail the coalition, why go for new elections, why not try to create a new coalition with the current parliament? Seems like a huge waste of time and effort and resources.

[rob in cal]

   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?

[rob in cal]

  I"m still intrigued about the FPO under Hofer, and thinking he might be able to right the ship, and if he does, Kurz's vision of an OVP with near 40% of the vote is not happening.  Maybe I'm thinking too much about his solid performance as Presidential candidate in 2016.

[rob in cal]

  It seems as if Kurz was set on the OVP retaking the interior ministry no matter what, even if Kickl resigned he would not have allowed a new FPO member taking over, if what I read in some of the reporting is correct.  This implies that Kurz was intending the Strache affair as a justification for a major shakeup in the coalition, as control of the interior ministry was the key point for the FPO in the first place.
   

[rob in cal]

But what I'm still wondering about is whether Kurz actually would have let the FPO to name another FPO member as a new interior minister or whether there could be no new FPO interior minster because it would a conflict of intrest for the Ibiza investigation.

[rob in cal]

  As I see it one danger for the OVP is that unless they do really well in the elections, they will be scrambling to get a working coalition going after September, assuming Kurz doesn't want the SPO. I wonder about an OVP minority government in such a scenario.

[rob in cal]

  Also, its not as if the other FPO cabinet member were forced out. They resigned to protest the dismissal of Kickl.

[rob in cal]

If Kurz is no longer Chancellor after next week, I would think that would hurt the OVP's chances to hit the high 30's in support levels in the September election, without the prestige of a popular incumbent chancellor leading the party.

[rob in cal]

  Gotta love the disconnect between student support for the RFS and support for the FPO in Austria as a whole. Surprising that the AG is leading faction, but I guess thats just because there are so many left leaning groups. But perhaps among the strong majority of non-voting students there is a closer match to the political leanings of the rest of Austria.

[rob in cal]

  An SPO FPO coalition.  That  would be intresting to see.  In this fantasy scenario of mine Hofer helps clean up the FPO image and brand, and the SPO comes close to the FPO in the asylum immigration side of things, and the FPO comes closer to the SPO on taxation, government spending etc. Burgenland goes national.

[rob in cal]

  Hopefully FPO opponents don't try to tie Hofer's intrest in organic farming into latent Nazism, what with the Nazi intrest in organic farming and vegetarianism https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/Corinna-Treitel-Eating-Nature
 I like Hofer compared to other FPO leaders and believe had he been in charge of the FPO since the start of the OVP FPO coalition it would still be going strong.

[rob in cal]

If they could also pass direct democracy legislation that would be great, but I'm guessing neither party is really that supportive of that.

[rob in cal]

  Tender, do you think a new OVP FPO coalition is fairly possible soon?  I thought with all the bad blood developing over the Strache affair, plus FPO actually voting to unseat Kurz etc that that would not be very likely at all in the near future at any rate.

[rob in cal]

  Tender, in the past you've mentioned your concern over the Greens and other left leaning parties over their weakness on the immigration/asylum issues.  Do Kogler and the Greens seem significantly different now?

[rob in cal]

  Also, VDB didn't rule out approving another FPO member as interior minister, just not Kickl, if I read it correctly.

[rob in cal]

  Tender, if a OVP Green coalition government somehow emerged with Kurz as Chancellor I wonder how the activist base of the Greens would feel about reinstating Kurz who just a few months ago was one of the bad boys in European politics at least from the left wing perspective.

[rob in cal]

  Intresting that such an attitude is coming from a child of Bosnians, i.e.  european immigrants, not someone from a culturally far more different place.  Didn't read in the article which party she prefers, though I'm going to take a lucky guess and say its not FPO or OVP.

[rob in cal]

  Assuming the OVP would stick to its insistence on the interior ministry in a FPO OVP coalition, is there a member from the OVP that the FPO would support, someone fairly close to FPO desired policies?