Yes, it's deeply disturbing that a plurality of voters in Austria cast their vote in favour of an openly authoritarian if not fascism-adjacent right-wing extremist party in Sunday's national election. I am also very well aware of the practical consequences on the ground that would follow if they lead the next government (which is not assured). Including for ourselves, despite living in a bubble within a bubble, with their national result of 29.2% dropping to 21.2% in Vienna and 15.8% in our city district.

Nevertheless, at the risk of being accused of "schönrechnen" the result to myself, I offer the observation that it would be easy to exaggerate the extent to which this is part of or provides evidence for a lurch to the right across Europe. At some level, in Austria this is all a zero-sum game ‧between‧ right-wing parties and in particular, between bourgeois reactionaries and fascist reactionaries.

The quick and dirty graph below shows the combined share of both, plus various splinter parties* that popped up and disappeared again at various times, for the last ten parliamentary elections over the past thirty years.

The bottom line is that Austria has a structural modest, but perfectly stable, reactionary majority. The outlier in 2002 is when the previous right-wing government tripped over a huge corruption scandal.

It is deeply disappointing that their pie is not getting smaller, despite trends that should work against them, all else being equal, such as increasing levels of higher education, urbanisation, and cohort replacement. But their pie is not getting any bigger either. In fact, yesterday's result is exactly the median, and practically identical to that in 1999 if you consider the existence of the LIF splinter party at the time.

So the reactionaries may be getting more reactionary, but they have been making little to no progress for decades growing their overall number. If there is a Europe-wide trend to the Right then Austria isn't really a dynamic part of that — albeit for the bad reason that they've had a head start and have been standing at the finish line for decades.

*Specifically, I include both LIF and BZÖ, both of which specifically split from the main fascist party. I'm also including the arguably more ambiguous case of Team Stronach in 2013, which was a bit more diverse in who joined and who they pulled their votes from.

EDIT: The mail ballots have been slightly more left-leaning than predicted, so the combined right-wing vote share has been adjusted downward since yesterday. This year's result is actually ‧below‧ the 30-year median.

EDIT 2: There was a mistake in the 2002 data point, but it was conservative, in that the numbers are even more stable than I thought! h/t to @Mab_813 for spotting it.

#AustrianElections #EuropeanPolitics

Ja. Scheisse. Nun sind die Rechtspopulisten stärkste Macht in Österreich geworden.

Mal schauen wann die Orbanisierung vom Alpenländle eingeleitet wird. Hoffentlich halten sich alle Parteien daran, nicht mit den Nazis zu koalieren.

ÖVP, I look at you!
#austria #oesterreich #austrianelections #nationalratswahl