On the 1st Oct. this year the Nationalrat will be elected once again in Austria. Its the most important election of Austria we are allready in a hefty phase of campaigning. No need to see that the niveau has allready reached somewhat subterranean regions.

The Parties that are elected into the Nationalrat will afterwards try to form some kind of coalition that has a majority, which will be the basis for a new government.

The following parties compete in all Bundesländer in the elections:

ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei, the conservatives)
SPÖ (Sozialdemokratische Parei Österreichs, the social democrats)
FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, far right party, if not right extreme)
GRÜNE (the green party, ecosocial party, but also has more libertarian greens)
BZÖ (splinter party from the FPÖ, long story... Haider blew up the FPÖ some time ago and formed the BZÖ with loyals, leaving the even more extreme right wingers in the FPÖ. effectively the BZÖ is a determined to fail. Unlike the remaining FPÖ)
KPÖ (Communist party of Austria, yep the real Communists, exist since the foundation of the 2nd Republic, and since than have their stable 1% at all elections)
Liste Dr. Martin (a one man party but with the help of the most powerfull newspaper of Austria, the Kronen Zeitung. Dr Martin is currently member of the European Parliament but will have to step back if he gets into the Austrian Nationalrat. Why he wants to change his European Parliamentarian against the Austrian Parlamentarian post remains uncleared. But he definitely proves the power of the Kronen Zeitung, that allrady at the European elections mobilize above 10% of the voters to choose "their" candidate (they of course do not openly admit that it it their official candidate)

To your information the current government is a ÖVP-BZÖ coalition. Whereas the BZÖ is of such great insignificance that one could say its the ÖVP governing alone. Only in the field of minority rights in Carinthia were a pathetic crude fight about something irrational like two lingual village signs take place that allready led to setting in question of the constitutional court and its decissions. But thats another long long, somehow allready funny story.


As much as I can see the election campaigns nearly exclusively consists of negative campaigning. People might know why not to vote for the other party, but the reason why one should vote for a party has not been answered by anyone. The sole party that might be an exception is the Green Party. It mostly kept itself out of the low level blame game, mostly though due to the reason that it rellies on voters (mostly of high education) who would be very sensitive concerning that. The Greens would for sure harm itself much more with that than the others.


If anyone has questions, dont hestitate, I'll do my best to answer them.


This thread might be continued (and updated)....

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When the Nazis came for the communists I remained silent, I was no communist.
When the Nazis came for the Unionists I remained silent, I was no Unionist.
When the Nazis came for the Social Democrats I remained silent, I was no Social Democrat.
When the Nazis came for the Jews I remained silent, I was no Jew.
When the Nazis came for me, there was no one left who could protest.