Former Green Party leader, now independent Alexander Van der Bellen defeated his far right populist opponent Norbert Hofer (who’s already conceded defeat). This is encouraging to say the least (also not that surprising given that Herr Van der Bellen also won the presidential run-off that was annulled earlier this year.
When fuckin AUSTRIA is looking at you and saying, “Dude, back off the nationalist racist shit,” you know things are bad.
I was really hoping for a Hofer win, so I’m quite depressed right now. They do have another shot in 2018 when the legislative elections happen (the FPO is the most popular single party, though of course that matters less than you might think in a proportional representation system).
It’s interesting that Hofer was leading by a good margin earlier this summer (i.e. before Trump got elected). I suspect that Trump is going to hurt European ethno-nationalists through a sort of guilt by association: he is so obviously unqualified, immoral, etc., that when someone is described as the Donald Trump of Austria, or Australia, or the Czech Republic, or wherever, it ends up hurting them in public opinion.
Hofer actually seems to have some sense how how dangerous it would be to be associated with Donald Trump- earlier in the fall he was trying to reassure the media that if he was in America, he would have more in common with Hillary Clinton (on climate change, health care, the environment, etc.). For whatever reason though, that strategy didn’t end up working.
There has been another factor, in my opinion: voter participation.
In the May second round that was annulled, Van der Bellen squeaked by with a margin of barely 30.000 votes, for a 50.1% majority. Participation then was about 70.1% of the eligible voter base.
It seems that something ended up motivating quite a lot of people who didn’t vote in May to go vote this time, as participation is reported to have jumped by a non-negligible amount, to 74.1% of the eligible voter base.
I have the gut feeling that the majority of those “new voters” (and they cannot all have been people who became of voting age between May and now) would lean more towards Van der Bellen than towards Hofer. That, combined with the Trump factor influencing people changing their previous vote away from Hofer, might explain why Van der Bellen increased his margin of victory to 53.3% even before postal ballots are counted (which, historically, have favored Van der Bellen; he might well increase his margin of victory there).
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And that is the silver lining of Trump’s election.
I guess that that was because, for a non-negligible part of the electorate, his perceived similarities with Trump re: immigration and foreign relations might have, well, “trumped” whatever similarities with Hillary he might have had regarding social issues.
How come? Is there an issue with Van der Bellen and the Green Party? For instance, he supports gay marriage. You’re cool with that, right?
A most welcome backlash - glad to see extreme nationalist folks in Europe at least have the sense to see DT for the stark. raving. mad. (thx M.P.) nincompoop that he is.
Could that be because of the fear of the rising groundswell of far-right nationalism throughout Europe, particularly, AFAIK, in Germany, with that xenophobic Frauke Petry heading the AfD party?