"Austria has entered new territory in recent months." With these words, Austria's Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen begins a video in which he calls his compatriots to the election. On Sunday, 6.4 million Austrians are allowed to appoint a new parliament - the National Council - and a new government.
This has become necessary because the National Council of German Chancellor Sebastian Kurz expressed mistrust on 27 May 2019 by the conservative ÖVP and Van der Bellen relieved him of office one day later - a unique event in Austrian history so far. Previously, the governing coalition of ÖVP and the right-wing populist, partially right-wing FPÖ was broken, Austria experienced its worst political crisis since the Second World War. For the first time in the country's history, the president had to appoint a transitional government of experts.
Trigger of the turbulence was a secretly recorded video from the summer of 2017, from the SPIEGEL and "Süddeutsche Zeitung" on May 17 had published a seven -minute excerpt. The film shows the FPÖ leader and later vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache as well as his party friend and confidant Johann Gudenus. Both are sitting in a villa in Ibiza and secure state orders to an alleged Russian billionaire in case she buys the tabloid "Kronen Zeitung" and helps Strache to become chancellor with favorable coverage of the election in October 2017. Strache and Gudenus had fallen into a trap.
Although the coalition with the FPÖ ended shortly after the video was made public, it is conceivable that this alliance will continue after Sunday's election. Short was only 516 days Federal Chancellor and thus as short as no other before him, but probably he will be re-elected head of government. The ÖVP benefits from the Ibiza scandal, in polls, it is between 32 and 36 percent unassailable in first place. In the election of 2017 she had retracted 32 percent. Even revelations about shredded files, party donations that are above the legal limit, and high expenses for parties, private jet flights and hairdressing visits from Kurz seem to have nothing to do with the popularity values.
- Austria's ex-chancellor Kurz in an interview: "Have I been disgusted by isolated cases and missteps?"
The Social Democratic Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) ranks second with poll numbers of between 19 and 23 percent and the FPÖ with 19 to 26 percent, with the SPÖ in most surveys ahead of the FPÖ. In 2017, the SPÖ scored 27, the FPÖ 26 percent. Scandals apparently can not really hurt the parties in Austria.
The SPÖ was revealed in 2017 that it operated with fake websites to make up for short - she lost in the election, but did not crash into the bottomless. According to the polls, the FPÖ only loses four to six percentage points in the upcoming election - despite the Ibiza scandal, despite allegations of corruption in connection with the filling of posts in a gambling company, which became public in August. And despite the suspicion of Strache because of the settlement of private luxury as party expenses. The FPÖ sees itself as a victim in all these events. The Ibiza affair? A "political assassination" on the party, everything just "a b'soffene G'schicht".
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Election in Austria: These are the top candidatesStrache, who resigned as vice-chancellor and party leader the day after the video was released, received nearly 45,000 preferential votes only one week later in the European elections and could have joined the European Parliament. However, he renounced this mandate - instead, his wife is now allowed to run for the National Council in a safe list place.
For the Austrian Greens, the early elections are a stroke of luck - they stand in the current polls at 11 to 13 percent. Two years ago, after party-internal quarrels, they had failed at the four-percent hurdle. Instead, the "List Mushroom", a spin-off of the Greens, which this time no longer likely to be represented in the National Council - polls see them at 0.5 to three percent. Remain the Neos, a liberal party, the last time took five percent and is now at eight to nine percent.
In addition to the ÖVP, all parties in the election campaign, which many observers perceived as empty of content, have clearly stated their opposition to an alliance with the FPÖ. For short, a renewed coalition with the FPÖ on the one hand the simplest solution would be: A program is available, because actually you would anyway anyway at least until 2022 want to govern with each other, in terms of content, there are great overlaps. In short, in this case, with only slightly changed staff, could continue as before. But how believable would he be if he formed a coalition with the words "Enough is enough!" finished in order to continue this same alliance?
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Another computationally feasible alliance would be one from ÖVP and SPÖ. But in terms of content, these parties are now far apart in many areas. For many years, large coalitions paralyzed Austria. For many people, this solution is unpopular and therefore unlikely. In addition, Kurz and SPÖ boss Pamela Rendi-Wagner have hardly missed an opportunity to show how little they like each other.
Remains an experiment of conservatives, Greens and liberals - what did not work in Germany after the last general election. It would be a surprise, if it succeeds in Austria, because here too ÖVP, Neos and Greens are far apart in content. Coalition negotiations should be correspondingly difficult. For short, this constellation would have quite charm: He could free himself from the blemish, right-wing populists and right-wing extremists have helped to power.
The fact that someone other than Kurz becomes Chancellor is extremely unrealistic with the current poll numbers. Although there was already a head of government in Austria, who did not belong to the strongest party, not even the second strongest: Wolfgang Schüssel. His ÖVP landed at the time in 1999, in third place and entered into an alliance with the FPÖ, which had won second place in the electorate. Previously, coalition talks with the electoral party's strongest party, the SPÖ, failed.
But this time it will hardly be enough to forge an alliance without the participation of the ÖVP, which is in the foreground of polls. And one thing seems certain: with the FPÖ, the SPÖ, Neos and Greens will not form a coalition.
