The October 15 parliamentary elections in Austria have produced a remarkable outcome. After 15 years the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) returned to number one with 31.6 percent of the vote (62 seats). The Social Democrats came in second, with some 27 percent (52 seats), just barely outpolling the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), which won 26 percent (51 seats). Meanwhile, the Green Party electorate followed the advice of their socialist friends, voting for the Social Democrats instead in order to block an ÖVP-Freedom Party coalition. They failed in that goal and in the process committed political suicide: The Green Party will not be represented in the Austrian Parliament—only a tiny green splinter group that broke ranks with the party leadership just before the elections. And the business oriented “Neos” once again achieved more than the 4 percent minimum required for entering Parliament.
That, in a nutshell, is what happened according to the votes and the numbers. But what really happened beyond the numbers, and what will happen next?
After a very dirty campaign, for which the Social Democrats bear the main responsibility, the young and charismatic leader of the ÖVP, Sebastian Kurz, prevailed. He is the clear winner of the elections, in particular if one remembers that some two years ago his party polled less than 20 percent of the vote. According to Austrian tradition, Kurz will receive the mandate from the Federal President to form a new government, and it is fairly obvious what he will do with that mandate. After the rows during the election campaign, and in view of the stalemate within the previous government formed by the two parties, there will be no new “Great Coalition” with the Social Democrats, but instead most likely an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition. . . .
Like Merkel, Kurz realized that the main concern of his fellow citizens was immigration: Austria had accepted some 90,000 immigrants in 2015, more than 1 percent of its population. For the United States this would amount proportionally to some four million immigrants in a single year. In Germany the “socialdemocratization” of the CDU/CSU under Merkel, which could not be reversed enough or fast enough before the election, left space that the right-wing AfD eagerly filled. Kurz managed to position his middle-of-the-road party farther to the right (and did it more quickly), appealing to many of the voters that the party had lost to the FPÖ in the past. That difference in right-leaning flexibility explains the ÖVP’s success in Austria (as well as that of Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy [VVD] in the Netherlands back in mid-March) compared to the CDU’s poorer showing in Germany.
Also, the trend is his friend. See, e.g., the Czech Republic. In fact, it’s interesting to see that the move against the mush EU conventional wisdom seems to be flourishing in former Hapsburg areas. See also Hungary.