Austrian News & Politics

[Pentagathus]

What is the penalty for refusing the vaccination?

[Jubal]

Not sure, I've not really paid attention to that bit because it won't affect me. But I'll report back when I see more details.

[Pentagathus]

I've been fully vaxed myself but the thought of compulsory vaccinations do not sit well with me at all. I hope the booster vaccines don't become mandatory for healthcare workers here, I feel it's too much to give third doses to residents of wealthy nations who are already vaccinated when there are still billions of people in poorer countries who haven't had a single dose. But I won't really have much choice if I'm going to need a booster in order to attend placements.

Is there a lot of right wing support in Austria atm? IIRC the last presidential election very nearly led to a fairly far right president, I don't imagine lockdowns and vaccination mandates are going to help the left in the next election.

[Jubal]

I agree, I don't like compulsory vaccinations and I think the European/Western hogging of doses overall is appalling. It's tricky to know how one does solve the anti-vaxx problem, that said: if we don't get very high vaccination rates then it continues imposing the cost (financial but also social and psychological) of repeated lockdowns, deaths, etc on everyone. Maybe a halfway house like some additional tax for non-exempt unvaccinated people to incentivise them and help cover the costs of that choice? I really don't know. I'd like not to have to put any pressure on anyone with these sorts of things but I'd also like to not have all this happening on repeat.

The far right are on about 20 percent or a bit above - they fell back quite a bit after the Ibiza Scandal and never fully recovered, they've gone very very full anti-vaxx. The left are actually not doing too badly: the people really hurting lately have been the centre-right who were very dominant until the recent scandals around Kurz (the current government is Conservative-Green). They're still leading in polls but they've dropped from a very dominant mid to high thirties to being only in the mid twenties in percentage terms, with most of the other parties gaining a little as a result. The Greens are holding about where they were at the last election, the Social Democrats are a couple of points higher, and the NEOS (right-liberals) are doing about four points better: on current numbers one could almost scrape together a Red-Green-Pink coalition and shut out the Conservatives and Far Right altogether, which hasn't been the case for a long while.

[Pentagathus]

The far right are on about 20 percent or a bit above - they fell back quite a bit after the Ibiza Scandal and never fully recovered, they've gone very very full anti-vaxx. The left are actually not doing too badly: the people really hurting lately have been the centre-right who were very dominant until the recent scandals around Kurz (the current government is Conservative-Green). They're still leading in polls but they've dropped from a very dominant mid to high thirties to being only in the mid twenties in percentage terms, with most of the other parties gaining a little as a result. The Greens are holding about where they were at the last election, the Social Democrats are a couple of points higher, and the NEOS (right-liberals) are doing about four points better: on current numbers one could almost scrape together a Red-Green-Pink coalition and shut out the Conservatives and Far Right altogether, which hasn't been the case for a long while.

Ah, well that's good news at least (for me anyway). I'm guessing the anti-vax sentiment is low enough that it's not really going to gain support for far right movements, particularly since a lot of anti-vaxers are actually part of ethnic minorities (from what I've seen there seems to be a lot of conspiracy theories about the vaccines being linked to eugenics, which tbf seems more likely than mind-control microchips.)

As to the actual effect of vaccines, it doesn't seem to reduce transmission (with new variants becoming prevalent that is) but it does biggly reduce severity of infection and mortality rate. So widespread vaccination won't necessarily reduce the need for lockdowns, although it should ease pressure on hospitals. I suppose it's theoretically possible to pass a law stating that healthy people who choose not to get vaccinated for covid can't receive treatment from public health-services if they test positive for covid but I'm not sure how feasible that would be in practice or how well it would sit with anyone.

[dubsartur]

I agree, I don't like compulsory vaccinations and I think the European/Western hogging of doses overall is appalling. It's tricky to know how one does solve the anti-vaxx problem, that said: if we don't get very high vaccination rates then it continues imposing the cost (financial but also social and psychological) of repeated lockdowns, deaths, etc on everyone.

The other issue is that Austria eliminated the virus outside of Vienna in summer 2020.  We came so close!  But with the more infectious variants we seem stuck in this cycle of half measures other than vaccination.  And with the more infectious variants the vaccination rate would have to be very high to stop the disease from circulating.

How have public health advice in Austria been?  In BC the public health authorities have been very slow to withdraw advice to do burdensome things which don't seem to help (like cleaning your hands before you enter shops, or quarantining books returned to libraries, or wearing transparent face shields).

[Jubal]

The biggest problem with Austrian public health advice is that it's mostly correct but far too complicated. Part of that is that it's administered at state level whilst people get their news nationally, so it's very hard to actually tune the messages to how things work for people locally. But also there tend to be far too many variable standards rather than trying to get people to enforce one - so for example there's the "3G" system for entry to stuff - tested, vaccinated, or recovered, all of which start with a g in German. But then that's also spawned 2G, and it's often not obvious to people which of the 3Gs is left out in 2G, or when that's occurring. And then we've now also got 2.5G and 2G+ for different variants of what sort of tests are allowed and when, at which point nobody can remember what the hell is going on.

The stuff that's simple - like e.g. FFP2 masks on public transport and in shops - works well. The rest not so much, especially outside cities where rural towns and shops just don't enforce things.

I don't think the near-elimination in 2020 really registers with people here now any more or affects things much. There's a general acceptance, I think, that we were always going to have some issues once borders were open, we've just got too many neighbouring countries to wipe it out and do a New Zealand.

[Jubal]

Apparently lax enforcement has made Vienna knce again the espionage capital of Europe:
https://www.ft.com/content/f790d8f4-2fe1-466d-8b29-83b1f4956984

Meanwhile the FPÖ (far right) are at 28 percent and six points clear of the conservatives and social democrats in the polls, with the Beer Party polling easily enough to reach parliament and the Communists hopping around the threshold mark.

[Jubal]

Election campaign time over here!

There's a whole bunch of parties running: the five currently in parliament will probably get back in, the Beer party are still polling well enough to do so, the Communists currently look like just missing out. The other options include the Madeleine Petrovic List, which is an anti-vaccine party (nominally on the environmentalist left but they're running as an anti-vaccine party), and KEINE, which is actually a left-wing party called Wandel who decided to run under the label "None Of The Above" and I'm honestly kinda surprised they let them do that?

In terms of the bigger parties, it's the Kickl election in the blue (that is, hard-right) FPÖ corner. The FPÖ are on track to come top in the election, they've been leading polls for months. For them to win as opposed to just top the ballot, though, they need to win by enough to strong-arm the ÖVP into agreeing to be their junior partners, and they need the combined right-wing parties to have a majority. Nehammer, the current chancellor and ÖVP leader, has tried to say he'd be OK to working with the FPÖ as a party but not with working with Kickl, who is on the foaming-at-the-mouth-visibly wing of the FPÖ. Kickl is simultaneously in the position of being the plurality choice for "who would you most like to be chancellor of Austria" and also being one of the least liked politicians in Austria: 28% might want him in the Chancellery, but given his overall confidence index sits at minus forty, basically everyone who doesn't want him to be chancellor thinks he's a turd.

Nehammer's conservative ÖVP are running a few points behind the FPÖ, around four points on average, with the social-democrat SPÖ a couple of points behind them. The SPÖ and everyone else probably only get a look-in if either an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition is impossible or if it is possible but they can't agree on one. Making the coalition impossible is unlikely since the ÖVP strengthened its polling in recent months: the parties combine for 50-52% of the vote, and given a few points will be go to parties that don't hit the threshold, that's plenty for a majority. The four other parties expected to hit the threshold (SPÖ, NEOS, Greens, and Beer) combine for just 44%. Three-party grand coalitions (ÖVP/SPÖ/NEOS or ÖVP/SPÖ/Green) might not be impossible if the right can't get a coalition together and would have a large majority but more coalitions partners to try and satisfy.

All in all it's a pretty miserable election to watch, though the question of "can you be ridiculously unpopular and still strong-arm your way into the Chancellery on the back of the just over a quarter of people who actually like you" is a politically interesting one. I just really hope the answer is no.

[The Seamstress]

Yup... I don't know much about The Mysterious Workings Of Politics, tbh, but I know enough to be afraid "dumpster fire" describes the current situation pretty well.

And I'm so tired of "what would be the least terrible outcome" more or less dictating my voting decisions, and the feeling it doesn't make a difference in the end, anyway, because the right-wingers will always find just enough conservative racists to vote for them. 

[Jubal]

Yeah, Austria is just deeply socially conservative on some levels which is very tiring sometimes: its status quo is quite progressive on some baseline tax-and-spending stuff, but on immigration, equalities, anyone who doesn't fit some weird Austrian definition of normal... it's not ideal.

Anyhow, next Sunday the Sonntagsfrage gets asked for real.

Currently the polls look like:

• The FPO have remained steady on 27/28 percent, but the OVP have narrowed the gap significantly, down to 1-2 points as of the last few surveys. So if FPO turnout is not as high as pollsters expect, a result where the FPO were on 25/26 and the OVP managed 27/28 wouldn't be impossible. Usually polls end up a little bit out for one reason or another.
• The SPO have basically flatlined on 21%. I suspect there's some turnover there where they've clawed back some KPO and Beer Party voters but lost voters to the OVP.
• The Greens and Neos will both comfortably but undramatically return to parliament on about 10% each.
• The Beer party have lost ground, and will struggle to make the threshold, as will the KPO who have been consistently 1-2 points below the parliamentary threshold line.

So... we'll see. FPO-OVP still seems the most likely coalition, but if they're very close in votes it may be harder for Kickl to insist on becoming Chancellor which he's clearly personally desperate for. There's been some talk in the press that if it's a close result Kickl may decide to sit it out and force a grand coalition on the grounds that in opposition to a red-black-pink bloc he might feel he'll be best placed to win the following election by a bigger margin... I'm not sure that'd work in Austria's political culture, but it's hard to know.

[Jubal]

Well, the election results were prestty much dead on accurate to the polls. We still don't have a government.

What we do have:

• President Van der Bellen pointed out that everyone had ruled out working with the FPO or had conflicting red lines with them so he hasn't given them a government formation mandate until that changes.
• The SPO are kinda distracted by some random guy deciding to launch a leadership challenge. And when I say some random guy, I mean Rudolf Fussi, a TV host and PR consultant who as far as I'm aware has never held public elected office and wasn't even a member as recently as the start of 2023. The SPO should possibly restrict who's allowed to head up leadership challenges? This all seems very silly.
• In general it seems like an OVP/SPO coalition, quite likely with NEOS on board, might be most likely: the SPO want to be back in government, the OVP don't want to give up the chancellor's office to the FPO. The risk is that both of them will need that government to work well to avoid a bigger FPO result next time.

Vorarlberg also had a state election today, which was sadly again good for the FPO but less good for them than hoped: the OVP will clearly remain the dominant party there, probably taking the FPO into coalition.