On posters for the municipal council election this Sunday, it says it's about Vienna. Which is true. However, the focus is on questions of national political significance. Will the crisis of the ÖVP continue? Will it fall back to pre-Sebastian Kurz levels here as well? Or: How does the participation in the federal government affect the Neos? And: Can the Greens, who are running from one loss of votes to the next, recover?
But above all: How much can the Freedom Party gain and, conversely, how will the leading Social Democrats perform? European and national elections, as well as the Styrian state election, have created the impression over the past year that the FPÖ under Herbert Kickl is continuously rising in percentage and leaving all other competitors behind. That there is no upper limit for them.
Kickl may have only been the top candidate in the national election, but that is incidental: He has found a way to respond to the crises of the time and address the concerns and needs of people, so that the FPÖ is sweeping everywhere. Even if he, like now in Vienna, is not running.
In European and national elections as well as the Styrian state election, the ÖVP had nothing to counter this and therefore had to give up first place to the FPÖ. Which raises the question of whether they, or in a certain way Kickl, really cannot be stopped?
Of course, the answer is yes. In the Burgenland election, the local governor Hans Peter Doskozil has already proven this year what is possible. The Social Democrat addressed issues that are burning under people's nails. He did not leave this to the Freedom Party. Result: He was able to surprisingly keep his party far ahead. The Freedom Party did gain, but could not become dangerous to the SPÖ.
It would now be bitter for Michael Ludwig, the Mayor of Vienna and SPÖ chairman, if he could not achieve something similar. Doskozil is his biggest adversary. He would suddenly be the strong man of social democracy, the only one who understands how to deal with the Freedom Party competition.
Ludwig is making an effort. And in such a way that his left-wing federal party chairman Andreas Babler must feel uneasy: He positions himself deliberately to the right of center, welcomes the suspension of family reunification for asylum seekers, or demands closed residential communities for severely criminal youths under 14, a kind of deprivation of liberty, not to say detention.
These will be the central questions on election night: By how much will the FPÖ gain, and how much of their 41.6 percent from 2020 can the SPÖ hold? According to surveys, they could reach around 40 percent, thus hardly weakened. Which would not only underline that something can be countered against the Freedom Party, but also how it can be done.
Johannes Huber runs the blog dieSubstanz.at – Analyses and Backgrounds on Politics
This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.