{"id":2333,"date":"2016-12-08T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T09:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canterburypolitics.wordpress.com\/?p=2333"},"modified":"2018-09-10T15:56:53","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T14:56:53","slug":"the-end-of-business-as-usual-in-austrian-politics-green-candidate-triumphs-in-presidential-election-run-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/2016\/12\/08\/the-end-of-business-as-usual-in-austrian-politics-green-candidate-triumphs-in-presidential-election-run-off\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of “business as usual” in Austrian politics: Green candidate triumphs in presidential election run-off"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr Philipp K\u00f6ker, Senior Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations as Canterbury Christ Church University<\/em><\/p>\n

On Sunday, 4 December, Austria finally held the do-over of the second round of presidential elections after the Constitutional Court annulled\u00a0the first attempt due to irregularities.Green party veteran Alexander Van der Bellen, running as an independent, had won the first run-off on 22 May with only a razor-thin margin of 31,000 votes, but was now able to claim a more decisive victory. While national and international observers may be relieved by the fact that controversial far-right candidate Norbert Hofer (FP\u00d6) was defeated, the election has already spelled an end to business as usual in Austrian politics and may even have greater signalling power for (presidential) elections across Europe next year.<\/p>\n

\"results-of-the-austrian-presidential-election-2016-presidential-power-com\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Austrian presidential elections 2016, more precisely its runoff, will likely go down in history as an example of all the things that can go wrong when organising an election. The Constitutional Court found numerous\u00a0violations of procedures in its ruling on the first runoff elections, ranging from the deliberate destruction of unaccounted ballots, early opening of postal ballots and the accidental inclusion of 14 and 15 year-olds on the electoral register. The do-over of the election \u2013 first planned for 4 October \u2013 was riddled with problems, too, and had to be postponed due to faulty glue application on envelopes for postal ballots.<\/p>\n

The subsequently stretched out electoral campaign showed great variations in\u00a0intensity and in approval for the two candidates which can otherwise only rarely be observed (hardly any country around the world leaves more than one month between first round and runoff). At first, these variations and particularly the voiding of the first runoff seemed to play in favour of far-right candidate Norbert Hofer whose approval ratings put him several percent ahead of his challenger. Nevertheless, while politicians from the dominant parties SP\u00d6 and \u00d6VP (whose candidates failed to enter the runoff for the first time since the end of WWII) were still reluctant to declare their support for either candidate in anticipation of a FP\u00d6 victory and the need to form a coalition after the next general elections, the vast majority of public figures and intellectuals now supported Van der Bellen (a fact criticised by Hofer\u2019s campaign as a conspiracy of the establishment). Yet Hofer also fell victim to his aggressive rhetoric and his failure to criticise the vicious attacks on Van der Bellen by his followers via social media.<\/p>\n

Hofer also continued to advertise his vision of a more active president who would make more frequent use of the ample constitutional powers of the office, which include dismissal of the Chancellor at will (see also Robert Elgie\u2019s interview with Die Presse<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a>). The prospect of a new government and\/or early elections \u2013 which may still happen \u2013 may have turned voters towards Van der Bellen who promised to continue within the current political practice and limit his activism to more frequent interpellations and statements in political debates.<\/p>\n

Increased international attention and scrutiny, particularly in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, has been another factor working in Van der Bellen\u2019s favour. Similarly to the French presidential election in 2002, when far-right leader Jean Marie Le Pen surprisingly relegated Social Prime Minister Lionel Jospin\u00a0to third place and entered the runoff against incumbent Jacques Chirac, the potential of a far-right victory and subsequent \u2018slide to the right\u2019 mobilised voters for the left-centrist Van der Bellen. Nevertheless, the stark difference between electoral results (Chirac beat Le Pen with 82:18 margin), highlights the considerably greater support for the far-right in Austria (although the French presidential contest 2017 may change the perspective on this).<\/p>\n

The latter example naturally leads to the question of what consequences the Austrian elections have nationally and internationally. The result of the first round already led to the resignation of Werner Faymann\u00a0as Chancellor and SP\u00d6 leader. Both SP\u00d6 and\u00a0\u00d6VP\u00a0have lost greatly in public support, whereas the FP\u00d6 \u2013 which already governs some of the Austrian federal states \u2013 is now on track to become the strongest party in the next election. Although a continuation of the grand coalition of SP\u00d6 and \u00d6VP may remain arithmetically possible, politically it will be difficult to exclude the FP\u00d6 from government much longer \u2013 an option which will likely find the same amount of resistance among Austria\u2019s neighbours as when it was first part of a coalition government with the \u00d6VP 1999-2003. The election has rung in the end of the traditional dominance of SP\u00d6 and \u00d6VP and highlighted their eroding support in the electorate. The fact that Hofer still won the first round of presidential elections and received more than 35.1% of votes in the run-off, will have encouraged far-right leaders across the European continent and may \u2013 as mentioned above \u2013 have signalling effect\u00a0for the French presidential elections. Looking towards elections in other European countries, the influence of the result is less clear. Hofer\u2019s FP\u00d6 is a long- and well-established far-right party and panders quite openly to those with questionable views of the Nazi-regime and Austrian involvement in it. In Germany, where general elections will be held in October 2017, the challenger from the far-right comes in the form of the \u2018Alternative for Germany\u2019. Although it only narrowly missed the 5% threshold in the 2013 elections and has recently won mandates in the European Parliament state legislatures, it is far from being as deeply anchored and widely accepted in society as the FP\u00d6.<\/p>\n

Last, the Austrian elections highlights a potential emerging trend in (presidential) elections \u2013 the rise of establishment figures running anti-establishment campaigns. Despite being clearly part of the political establishment, Hofer (deputy speaker of the lower chamber of parliament) and Van der Bellen (former leader of the Green party and long-standing deputy) presented themselves as anti-establishment candidates. One could argue that support for\u00a0Milo\u0161 Zeman\u00a0(also a former party leader and Prime Minister) in the Czech Republic as well as for long-time senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries and billionaire Donald Trump in the presidential election elections are expressions of the same phenomenon. Nevertheless, the question remains whether this means that (far-right) populists can only be defeated by other (centre or left-wing) populists, or if there is another way in which established parties can counter the erosion of their support.<\/p>\n

An earlier version of this post first appeared on the “Presidential Power Blog” at\u00a0presidential-power.com<\/a> on 6 December 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Philipp K\u00f6ker, Senior Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations as Canterbury Christ Church University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161081,"featured_media":13,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,25],"tags":[97,185,865,1597,1785,1817],"class_list":["post-2333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-research","tag-alexander-van-der-bellen","tag-austria","tag-far-right","tag-norbert-hofer","tag-populism","tag-presidential-elections"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Anna Vanaga","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/645\/2018\/08\/blogs-holding680x453.jpg","postExcerpt":"By Dr Philipp K\u00f6ker, Senior Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations as Canterbury Christ Church University","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3914,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions\/3914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}