Austria – How would *you* vote?

Here’s an interesting exercise, especially for my more conservative (politically or theologically) friends. Wahlkabine has a questionaire that you can fill in to work out which party you would vote for in the Austrian elections. Click on the link and then click the huge "Starten" button. Don’t worry if your German isn’t up to scratch, I’ve translated the questions for you below. In the questionaire you can tick whether you agree, disagree or aren’t bothered about a question, and also how important you think it is.

My results were as follows:

BZÖ   9
FPÖ -15
ÖVP -24
SPÖ -38
Greens -51
Communists -79
Liberals -86

Remember, the BZÖ and the FPÖ are the two "right-wing" parties. Does that result confirm your worse suspicions about me, or come as some surprise (i.e. you know that I’m kinda moderate and that therefore the fact that my views are similar to these two parties is interesting)?

I’d be interested if you took the questionaire and then posted your results below, with an indication of how you normally vote in your own homeland elections. My suspicion is that many conservatives are going to be surprised at how moderate the two "right-wing" Austrian parties actually are.

Over to you.

  1. Should taxes go up for the wealthy to help fight poverty in Austria?
  2. Should new fathers receive one month’s fully paid paternity leave?
  3. Should criminals without Austrian nationality be deported after they’ve served their sentence?
  4. Should the Austrian Army (currently conscript based) become a volunteer only force?
  5. Should student course fees be abolished?
  6. Should everybody receive a basic income from the state?
  7. Should important decisions about the EU (Turkish entry, Lisbon treaty etc) by submitted to a referendum, even if the rest of the EU don’t have one?
  8. Should schooling aged 10-14 be made comprehensive (currently 10-14 year olds are streamed into the equivalent of grammar schools and secondary moderns)?
  9. Should the names of Sex offenders be available in a publicly accessible register?
  10. Should Austria tighten the criteria (health, family situation, skills) for asylum and immigration claims?
  11. Should the traffic problems on Austrian roads be eased by a higher tax on lorries (Austria has a large amount of intra-European traffic passing through it’s borders)?
  12. Should art which is socially controversial receive any state promotion or support?
  13. Should the consumption of soft drugs (Hash / Cannabis etc) be made criminal and prosecuted (currently Austrian police turn a blind eye to the consumption, but not the selling, of Cannabis)?
  14. Should the number of seats in Parliament be reduced to save money (Austria uses the d’Hondt List System)?
  15. Should those with higher incomes pay more into the National Health Insurance system, over and above the current maximum limit?
  16. Should Austria spend public money to get information about “tax refugees” (those Austrians who move their money around to avoid paying tax)?
  17. Should CCTV in public areas (rail and bus stations, public buildings) be even further increased than in recent years?
  18. Should there be a general smoking ban in restaurants and cafes?
  19. Should Austria introduce boot camps / borstals for young criminals?
  20. Should Austria spend more money on foreign development aid?
  21. Should long-term unemployed be made to work for non-profit organisations?
  22. Should children born in Austria automatically receive Austrian citizenship (at present they don’t unless their parents are Austrian)?
  23. Should the state pension start age be automatically increased in line with an overall aging population, in order to ensure long-term financial viability?
  24. Should abortion be made available on the State Health Insurance (currently abortions in Austria have to be paid for privately)?
  25. Should same-sex couples be allowed to adopt children?
  26. Should private car owners be helped by decreasing duty on petrol?

7 Comments on “Austria – How would *you* vote?

  1. Admittedly my answers on some issues were a bit random but I came out as
    FPOe 73
    BZOe 49
    OeVP -2
    SPOe -57
    LIF -108
    Gruene -153
    KPOe -238

    What our negative scores show us is that it is much easier to work out who we don’t want to vote for than who we do. How true that is at election time!

    Psephologically yours,

    The Foxe
    Vote Foxe for Archbishop
    Foxe’s Slogan ‘Ban Archbishops’

  2. Hi Peter, I get an Austrian channel here where I live so I can follow this a bit, I wouldn’t vote for Haider he seems like a total clown and is very fond of populistic publicity stunts. (For example, his behaviour with bilingual road signs in his home county where there is a slovenian minority) I wonder, actually, if the questions here about abortion and homosexual couples being allowed to adopt might be skewing my results a bit. Or maybe his programme really is more moderate than people think, given that the answers I gave would by no means be “extreme right”

  3. Matt, I’m going to suggest to you that the second of your possible explanations is the correct one. Haider is certainly an austro-cultural populist, but I don’t think he’s a neo-nazi in the slightest, and once you get past that label and start looking at the actual policies you see that.

  4. Hi Peter, I got BZÖ 25, FPÖ 20, ÖVP -25, SPÖ -53, Greens -82, Liberals -100, communists -157. I live in Germany and support the CDU here. While I was home in the UK I voted Labour, but will vote Tory in the next election.
    Your scores show you don’t actually like any of the parties!

  5. Dear Peter,

    I tend to vote for a different party at each election depending on what the issues are! I don’t think any party has sufficient integrity on the issues that matter to me, politically and ethically, to command my vote on a general basis.

    In Christ,

    The Foxe.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.