🇦🇹 Austrian Elections & Politics 6.0 - Upper Austria election: 26 Sept. 2021

[parochial boy]

The Swiss Greens did significantly better in French Switzerland (~19%) than in German Switzerland (~11%). They're doing well for a combination of demographic reasons (younger, multicultural, more urban, highly educated and increasingly culturally liberal population) as well as issue salience (climate strikes, repeat heatwaves, melting glaciers and the fact it doesn't snow in winter any more is a little bit hard to ignore). The majority of their new support in 2019 came from previous non-voters rather than from the Socialists.

[parochial boy]

Can we get a translation of that Beer party ad? I feel like it’d be funnier if I knew what they were saying...

Seeing as no-one else wants to, German as a third language speaker me shall do the honours

Girls -  talking about how some presumably hispter places in Vienna is too small, so the beer fountain might be more useful
nerdy guy - "oh my God! He's taken the left wing votes"
Men - something about how presumably the leader of the Beer Party is right about "foreign" fruit in our good old Austrian beer (I think this is a joke about pineapple IPA's and that sort of thing)
nerdy guy - "oh my God, he's taken the right wing votes! Who is this guy?"
sunglasses guy - "It's the leader of the Beer party"
nerdy guy tweets that the Beer Party guy is destroying democracy
Beer party guy - "dear voters, don't let yourselves be influenced, your votes don't belong to any party, they can't be stolen, they belong to you"

[parochial boy]

Yes, and the 1st District is also much slower to diversify than other districts of Vienna - which have seen an influx of immigrants from all over the World.

The population in the 1st has actually declined a lot over the decades and is pretty stagnant lately, while others are back to their 1900 levels.

While you have people from Africa and the Middle-East and Eastern Europe settle in the 10th and 11th districts and R-5H (where you can still get apartments for 10€ the square meter), you will mostly see upper-middle-class immigrants from Germany, Switzerland or Russia settle in the first, because they can afford to do so (5.000€/squre meter).

And those wealthy immigrants from the EU and Russia etc. are by definition more ÖVP+Green+NEOS voting, instead of SPÖ+FPÖ+Strache ...

Did you miss some zeroes in the first price you mentioned? You'd be talking about apartments of 100 m² costing less than a small motorcycle lmao

Also, 5000€ per m² sounds pretty low for the poshest and upper-class-est district in all Austria.

That’s monthly rent prices, not purchase prices.

You can still rent a 100m² apartment for about 1.000€ per month in some of those residential middle-class districts. Purchase prices: ca. 100.000 to 300.000€.

Vienna remains one of the most affordable cities for working-class families. The prices there are only a handful of what they are in Munich, London or Paris.

On the other hand, you are easily spending a few to several thousand €s a month to rent a same-sized luxury apartment in the inner-city. Purchase prices: 1 million € or more.

Aaaaaaaaah OK

Now it all makes sense. Sorry, I just never talk in terms of rent prices, because it isn't part of my personal life really.

As a general thing, home ownership rates are much lower, and consequently the number of people renting is much higher, in the German speaking countries than elsewhere. In big cities that is even more the case. So in a city like Vienna, you have around 80-90% of people renting their homes. Which is why people tend there tend to automatically assume prices as meaning rent prices rather than purchase ones.

[parochial boy]

I understand. I remember seeing some graphics about homeownership rates in Europe something like one month ago and there was exactly that but sadly I don't remember any other details.

Voilà


Seems that it is really the DACH countries and former Easter bloc that stand out. Seems like in the former case it is basically down to there being no particular ideological attachment to "property ownership" and consequentially government policy has never really catered towards it, instead making a bigger effort to ensure that private renters are relatively secure and well protected. I suspect the opposite effect would be in play in post-90's Eastern Europe.

[parochial boy]

The graphics I saw also divided private housing tenants and social housing tenants. Do you have anything on that?
(I am pretty sure the UK is especially high on the latter)

Nothing consistent to be honest. This seems to suggest one thing; and this something rather different when it comes to Social/Subsidied/below-market-price housing. I guess it comes to arguing about what counts or not. That is, between an actual state owned council house; a housing co-operative; co-ownership; privately owned to but government defined "affordable housing"; or just subsidised rent there are quite a few options and I guess you would get different results on which particular model you decided to include or not.

[parochial boy]

The results were about what I expected ...

Despite 56% for the SPÖ, this is actually their worst result since 1972.

Best result for the Greens ever.

Best result for the KPÖ since 1986.

That's surprising, although given that it's a very meager 1.12% of the vote, it tells you more about the dire straits in which the party has been for many, many years than anything.

Not sure I'd even call it dire straights in this day and age to be honest. They're a regional party who are relevant in Graz, and a footnote everywhere else

[parochial boy]

Chancellor Schallenberg and Finance Minister Blümel, both ÖVP, just resigned. What's next? New elections?

German news sources say Karl Nehammer, Interior Minister, is likely to be next ÖVP leader and chancellor.

I hope there will be snap elections and the SPÖ comes to power again.

What do polls indicate right now?

Well if there is one country where we could have some pretty legitimate doubts about what the polls are saying then it’s probably Austria