A tale of firsts: the 2019 Austrian snap election

Abstract

The 2019 Austrian snap election, held on 29 September 2019, was preceded by a series of scandals. Most prominent among them was the so-called ‘Ibizagate’ involving the former Vice-Chancellor and FPÖ party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache. The scandal eventually led to the collapse of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition in May 2019 and the formation of a caretaker government. The election day in September brought a clear victory for the ÖVP with an increase of almost six percentage points, compared to its vote share in the 2017 election. The second big winner was the Green party which scored the best result in the party history with 13.9 per cent of the vote. Amid scandals, the FPÖ saw its support fall to only 16.2 per cent; the election also resulted in an all-time low for the SPÖ achieving only 21.2 per cent. The article presents the background, the election campaign and the results of the 2019 Austrian election, discussing the wide range of ‘firsts’ that characterized them, including the formation of the first ÖVP-Green coalition government in Austria.     

Multi-dimensional economic voting in Spain: The 2008 election

Economic voting studies remain contentious in Spain. The notion is widely-held that there is no economic vote in that country, due to the pervasive and effacing influences of left-right ideology. Still, a growing number of investigations show a significant impact of economic evaluation on the vote choice in Spanish national elections. At least one possible exception here is the 2008 election, where the question has received no systematic treatment. In this study, we explore the impact of economic voting in that contest. We find, first, the presence of strong economic voting of the valence kind. Second, we find that two hitherto unstudied dimensions of economic voting – position and patrimony – have their own independent effect.     

Transformation and polarization: The 2008 presidential election and the new American electorate

Along with the unpopularity of President Bush and the dire condition of the U.S. economy, changes in the composition of the American electorate played a major role in Barack Obama’s decisive victory in the 2008 presidential election. The doubling of the nonwhite share of the electorate between 1992 and 2008 was critical to Obama’s election as African-American and other nonwhite voters provided him with a large enough margin to overcome a substantial deficit among white voters. In addition, voters under the age of 30 preferred Obama by a better than 2–1 margin, accounting for more than 80 percent of his popular vote margin. Despite the overall Democratic trend, the results revealed an increasingly polarized electorate. Over the past three decades the coalitions supporting the two major parties have become much more distinctive geographically, racially, and ideologically. The growth of the nonwhite electorate along with the increasing liberalism and Democratic identification of younger voters suggest that a successful Obama presidency could put the Democratic Party in a position to dominate American politics for many years. However, these trends appear to be provoking an intense reaction from some opponents of the President. The frustration and anger displayed at “tea party” demonstrations and town hall meetings may reflect not just discomfort with Barack Obama’s race but the perceived threat that Obama and his supporters represent to the social status and power of those on the opposing side.     

A party system in flux: the Swedish parliamentary election of September 2018

In the Swedish parliamentary election of 7 September 2018, the biggest parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderates, both lost votes compared to their scores in the previous election, but not as many as they had feared. Commensurately, the radical-right challenger party, the Sweden Democrats (SD), which had seemed certain to profit from Sweden's dramatic experience of the European migration crisis, did well, but not as well as it had hoped. The result left the array of parliamentary forces fragmented and finely balanced. Only after months of negotiations could a government be formed. Eventually, the incumbent coalition received a renewed parliamentary mandate. At the same time, the party system was transformed.