Not liking it at all so far. But the world won’t be ending any time soon, and neither will democracy in Austria.
What’s at stake? The presidency in Austria is largely ceremonial - comparable to the Governor General in Canada, not to US, French or Russian presidents.
Basically, the worst a hypothetical president Hofer might be able to do is to trigger parliamentary elections just at the time when it suits his own party the most. Or to use that as a threat to extract some minor concessions from the actual government.
How right-wing is the “Freedom Party” FPÖ? Depends. Mostly to the left of Le Pen and Wilders, last time I checked. Not worse than Fidesz in Hungary or PiS in Poland (though a lot less religious than the latter). Definitely opposed to immigration, especially from islamic nations. Compared to other parties that exist in Europe, I would think that the label “far-right” that the BBC gives them is wrong. They are right-wing populists, not “far right”. Like many European “right-wing” parties, they’d qualify as left-wing In some respects on the American political spectrum.
Supporters of the welfare state; in fact, they are using the welfare state as a major argument against immigration.
Not very religious, but tends to view Christianity as an integral part of Austrian culture; i.e. atheists are fine, as long as its the Christian God they disbelieve.
Slightly homophobic on average, opposed to marriage equality and adoption by homosexual couples, with some party members referring to homosexuality as a sickness. Also has openly homosexual politicians in its ranks, on the other hand.
Male-dominated party; does not approve of “feminist activism”. They do support equality of the sexes in theory, though. Have recently discovered “women’s rights” as a reason why excessive immigration from Islamic countries is a problem.
The only party with a significant number of people who own a handgun.
Anti-TTIP. Anti-EU, though ostensibly not to the point of threatening to leave the union.
Avoiding the FPÖ is usually my top priority in voting, but I think I would still prefer them to most, if not all, republicans.
What happened the last time they were in power? In 2001, the FPÖ won 27% in the parliamentary elections, and became part of a coalition government until 2006. By the end of it, they had split into two parties totalling 15% at the 2006 elections and cost the Austrian state an estimated 10-20 billion Euros through corruption and incompetence.
Who’s the other guy? Alexander van der Bellen, head of the Green party 1997-2008. Officially stood as an independent candidate but was supported financially by the Green party.
Who will win the run-off vote? Unclear. Van der Bellen happens to be my favourite candidate, but he’s the wrong person for the run-off. If the third candidate, Irmgard Griss (truly independent, harmless moderate conservative), had made it to the run-off, she would have definitely won. The Green party, that van der Bellen is still associated with, usually represents the leftmost ~15% of the political spectrum, and thus might be unelectable for most conservatives. Van der Bellen is probably the only candidate (besides Richard Lugner, the slightly senile 2%-candidate that no one ever took seriously) that Hofer is likely to win against.
Voting systems Hofer is definitely not the Condorcet winner. Having a single run-off election ended up pitting the very extremes of the candidate spectrum against each other. On the other hand, I’m really glad that we don’t use the American system; Hofer is the strongest candidate in allmost all districts except for the cities of Vienna, Graz and Innsbruck.
Why are they so strong? I blame the refugees. In late summer/fall of 2015, Austria basically lost control over its borders. About 200,000 people entered the country in September alone, most of them headed for Germany. something between 500,000 and a million people transited through Austria in 2015; 95,000 stayed to apply for asylum (slightly more than 1% of the population). Government and police looked a bit out of their depth. Border police were literally shoved aside and ignored by groups of young male refugees at the border with Slovenia.
Add to that the terrorist attacks in Paris and France; several of the terrorists are said to have entered Europe (re-entered, I think) hidden among the stream of refugees. The “cologne” attacks weren’t a good advertisement for immigration from islamic countries, either. And the FPÖ was the traditional anti-immigration party.
What now?
Run-off elections are on May 22nd. Then, we’ll either have the most progressive president in the history of the country, or an asshole elected into an almost but not quite powerless office.
