5 octobre 2016 Note °4 Eurocité, 12 Cité malesherbes, 75009 Paris [email protected] www.eurocite.eu Progressive Politics in Austria: A Never-ending Presidential Election and other Challenges Mario Gavenda Mario Gavenda is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Vienna and recent graduate of the postgraduate programme at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. His current research project deals with the impact of the politicisation of EU affairs on political parties and their internal dynamics, and his wider interests concern European integration, political parties and the politics of globalisation. [Picture: John Fonseca, 28 July 2007, Creative Commons License] " ! ! Amidst political turmoil across Europe, Austrian politics has silently been caught in a watershed moment, attempting but comically failing to elect a new president since April. In a dramatic run-off in May 2016, Alexander Van der Bellen (backed by the Greens) prevailed with a lead of merely 30,000 votes over the far-right FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria) candidate Norbert Hofer (50.3% against 49.7% of votes). Austria had averted the fate of becoming the first European country with a far-right president and instead elected a former opposition leader of the moderately left-wing Greens instead. However, in July the Austrian Constitutional Court ordered the rerun of the second round, due to procedural mistakes in the counting of postal ballots in several districts. After the repeat election had been set for 2 October, a significant number of damaged envelopes of already sent-out postal ballots foiled this attempt already before election day. The parliament has now decided that the postponed rerun of the run-off will be held on 4 December between Van der Bellen and Hofer in a potentially even more polarised and heated political climate. This analysis will first recapitulate the initial elections, before discussing the prospects for the rerun, and finally situate these events within a discussion of the state of the Austrian left. ! ! ! ! ! 1. The presidential election of 2016: The first attempt ! Elections for the office of Federal President are usually not the most spectacular feature of Austrian politics. While the constitution does indeed give comparatively extensive powers to the post, the officeholders have traditionally refrained from interfering into everyday politics and limited themselves to a largely ceremonial role. This is not surprising, as all presidents since 1945 had been nominated by either the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) or the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), the two main pillars of Austria’s stable post-war political order. This presidential election can be seen as an illustration of the erosion of this political order. The two parties have been governing together in a ‘Grand Coalition’ for the past 10 years, with however only a small parliamentary majority remaining since the 2013 elections. The candidates nominated by the SPÖ and ÖVP both suffered a crushing defeat with only 11% of votes respectively. Both were clearly outperformed by the independent former Supreme Court judge Irmgard Griss (19%), who had not held any previous political office and ran without financial support from any party. The front-runners however were the candidates of the two main "2 opposition parties, that is, Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) and Alexander Van der Bellen, a long-time leader of the Greens. While Van der Bellen’s reputation as a highly respectable centre-left politician earned him an expected 21%, Hofer came first with a shocking 35%. The second round thus saw a face-off between the representatives of the right- wing and the left-wing opposition. The contest that took shape shows remarkable similarities with the dynamics we can observe in European (and American) politics more broadly today. The electorate was split – rather literally – in two halves, pitting voters with contrasting attitudes against each other. On the one hand, those who welcome European integration, are prepared to take in refugees, and are generally more positive about opening the country towards the world. On the other hand, the citizens who feel threatened by immigration, globalisation and social changes. Political science has for a good number of years now theorised this divide as a new cleavage between “integration” and “demarcation”. Recently, the media has also begun to pay attention, for instance in the depiction of a clash between “drawbridges up” and “drawbridges down”. These attitudes can be attributed to a remarkable degree to specific social groups. While voters in rural areas and workers (with 86%!) overwhelmingly voted for the far-right candidate, the Green Van der Bellen achieved his best results amongst people with higher education and in the cities, above all the capital Vienna (over 63%). This dynamic is strikingly similar to the one seen in Brexit referendum a few weeks later, and reminds us of the serious challenges progressive and pro-European parties encounter in such a political environment. Even more so, as the populist anti-system narrative of the far-right has managed to depict Van der Bellen as part of a cosmopolitan political elite despite him or his party never having held any national executive office. ! ! 2. Perspectives for the rerun: A different election? ! The most immediate challenge for the left in Austria is to repeat the election result in December. Claims about voter behaviour in such an unprecedented context remain speculation, as many of the parameters of political debate will have changed from the May election until December. Much will depend on the public mood in relation to national and EU politics, for example as regards the upcoming decisions about the CETA free-trade agreement between the EU and Canada, to which Austrian public opinion is strongly opposed. Discontent with European decisions may spur support for the Eurosceptic Hofer, as could any incidents that can somehow be related to questions of asylum and immigration. The campaigns that had already started for the October election day can offer a glimpse into what can be expected from the two candidates until December. As for Hofer’s populist right-wing FPÖ, the successful appeal and postponement have provided the party with a renewed opportunity to insinuate that the system is rigged to the detriment of ‘the people’, despite repeated reminders that no indications for manipulation were found in the initial election. For Van der Bellen and the Green party, a second campaign was from the outset a logistical and "3 financial challenge. By August, the campaign had already collected more than 1 million euros mostly in small donations, a remarkable sum in a country where election campaigns are traditionally funded by political parties and public money. This allowed Van der Bellen to be more present in rural areas in which Hofer had been more successful in May. It remains to be seen whether this dynamic will continue now that the election has been postponed for another two months. A further factor to consider in the rerun is the capital city of Vienna. Here, Van der Bellen won a resounding victory in May with over 63% of the votes. This was disappointing for Hofer, Vienna has long been seen as a main battleground between the SPÖ and the FPÖ, for instance in the municipal elections in 2015, when the SPÖ prevailed after polls had long suggested a neck-and-neck race. Thus far there are no signs that the FPÖ has found a strategy to counter this weakness. For example, on 18 September, another election rerun for a district council in Vienna has seen the Greens successfully mobilise voters and even overtake the SPÖ to win the district mayoralty, while the FPÖ did not improve on its results from last year. ! ! 3. The Austrian left in the current rupture: Threats and chances ! These last Viennese elections in October 2015 were won by the Social Democrats with a pro-refugee message and offer a glimpse into the strategic quandaries the left faces. The Social Democrats have long oscillated between confronting and accommodating populist warnings of immigration and European integration. During the summer of 2015, Austria, following the German government, actively welcomed refugees stranded on the route between Greece and Hungary. As the far-right expectedly mounted opposition to this decision, the social-democratic mayor of Vienna chose to forcefully defend the ‘culture of welcome’ and was rewarded with 40% of the votes as opposed to the far-right’s 30%. This showed – just as the presidential elections – that it is possible to win elections at least in the urban areas without ceding ground to xenophobia. At the same time, this masks an uncomfortable development for the social democrats. While the SPÖ did well in Vienna’s inner-city districts with large student and middle-class populations, it continued to lose votes to the FPÖ in its traditional working class strongholds. The electorate seemed increasingly split along the same lines as in this year’s presidential elections, cutting across the usual voter coalition of the left. For the SPÖ presidential candidate Rudolf Hundstorfer it was not possible to pursue the same strategy, as the federal government had performed a U-turn in its refugee policy and unilaterally closed off the borders to its Southern neighbours in the early months of 2016. This was one further dent in the credibility of the governing parties and contributed to the dismal showing of their presidential candidates. In the SPÖ, the consequences were already drawn before the second round, with the replacement of party chair and Chancellor Werner Faymann by the manager of the public railway company, Christian Kern. While Kern thus far enjoys very favourable personal approval rates, the central question for Austrian social democracy remains: How to win back the trust of the working class while remaining firm in its "4 principles of anti-racism and constructive European engagement? While this question has troubled the left across Europe in the recent past, there are two specific problems for the SPÖ.