The Austrian Election
Let’s talk about the Austrian Presidential Election.
Two men are facing off for the Presidency of Austria. Although it is a mostly ceremonial role, it holds the power to appoint the Chancellor and Federal Ministers.
The choice is highly unusual in Austrian political history. Since 1951, the Presidency has been dominated by either the center-left Social Democratic Party, or the conservative Austrian People’s Party. But the two candidates running are from neither of those two parties.
Instead Alexander Van der Bellen of the left-wing Green Party and Norbet Hofer of far-right Freedom Party became the two contenders after taking the two highest shares of the vote in the first round of the election. The second round, held later, resulted in Van der Bellen narrowly winning by less than one percent of the vote (.88%). The close result was annulled by Austria’s Constitutional Court following vote irregularities.
So who will win the upcoming election on the fourth of December? In the run up to the original second round vote, Hofer led Van der Bellen by about 6 points in the polls the month before the election.
Currently, the most recent polls look like this:
Hofer for the past month or so had been leading Van der Bellen, but Van der Bellen has managed to pull ahead in some polls, and is behind by a smaller margin than he was in the polls in the run-up to the original second round vote.
Based off this I give Van der Bellen a slightly higher chance of winning the Presidency than Hofer. This is the most likely scenario based off the model created for this election:
Again, this is such a narrow margin that it becomes harder to predict, especially with the growing feeling of instability in Europe.
