Post by Old Badger on Sept 30, 2019 1:10:59 GMT -5
"Support for Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ) has plunged by more than a third as voters punished the far-right group in national elections for a corruption scandal that brought down the government...The FPÖ – whose former leader Heinz-Christian Strache resigned in May after a covertly filmed video showed the then vice-chancellor offering lucrative public contracts in exchange for campaign support to a woman he believed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch – came third with 16.1%, a drop of about 10 percentage points." link
The hard-right FPÖ had been in a coalition with the center-right People’s Party (ÖVP), which came in first with 37.1 percent. The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) was second, with 21.7 percent, but that was a modern low, in no small part because the Green Party surged to its best showing, coming in fourth with 14.0 percent, a rise of more than 10 points (they failed to reach the minimum threshold of 4 percent in the last election). There is talk of an ÖVP-Green coalition including a pro-business liberal party (which got 7.8 percent), which would seem to make for odd bedfellows. For much of post-war Austrian history the center-right and SPÖ formed broad centrist coalition governments, but not lately, although it's still possible. A re-creation of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition also is possible but unlikely because of opposition across the country, and particularly in the ÖVP; and because, as one columnist put it, “The coalition with the FPÖ was a mistake. Kurz overestimated its capability for government. Now he has a chance to correct that mistake.”
Key takeaway: the far right party lost badly, while the Greens surged and the center-right and center-left continued to be the top vote-getters. This is the latest sign that we're seeing rising resistance to the authoritarian-nationalist right.
The hard-right FPÖ had been in a coalition with the center-right People’s Party (ÖVP), which came in first with 37.1 percent. The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) was second, with 21.7 percent, but that was a modern low, in no small part because the Green Party surged to its best showing, coming in fourth with 14.0 percent, a rise of more than 10 points (they failed to reach the minimum threshold of 4 percent in the last election). There is talk of an ÖVP-Green coalition including a pro-business liberal party (which got 7.8 percent), which would seem to make for odd bedfellows. For much of post-war Austrian history the center-right and SPÖ formed broad centrist coalition governments, but not lately, although it's still possible. A re-creation of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition also is possible but unlikely because of opposition across the country, and particularly in the ÖVP; and because, as one columnist put it, “The coalition with the FPÖ was a mistake. Kurz overestimated its capability for government. Now he has a chance to correct that mistake.”
Key takeaway: the far right party lost badly, while the Greens surged and the center-right and center-left continued to be the top vote-getters. This is the latest sign that we're seeing rising resistance to the authoritarian-nationalist right.