Talk:2016 Austrian presidential election

Voter statistics aka number of eligible voters static between rounds?

Number of eligible voters for both first and second round is exactly 6382507 people! Surely, some people died and some had their birthday and therefore became eligible to vote between the rounds. These numbers can't possibly even out exactly. So, my question is whether it is an error here in Wikipeida that the number of eligible voters is the same for second round or whether it is an error on the Austrian electoral commission's webpage or whether voters list was actually left unchanged between rounds (that is, for example, if you were too young to vote in the first round, then you were not allowed to vote in the second round either even if you were now otherwise old enough to vote)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.107.251.205 (talk) 18:03, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

It's not a mistake: the number of eligible voters is always the same in both the first and second round of a presidential election. This is because the election should be decided by the same people who had the chance to vote in the first round. But now with the re-vote, the government (with the votes of FPÖ and Greens) decided to update the voter list for the December election because so many months have passed in between: About 48.000 people reached voting age (also by naturalisation) and about 45.000 people died. This means the updated voter list now has close to 6.4 million eligible voters, an increase of 17.000 people since May (including 14.000 new Austrians living abroad who also registered to vote). http://www.bmi.gv.at/cms/BMI_wahlen/bundespraes/bpw_2016/Wahlberechtigte_2WG.aspx --The Pollster (talk) 11:02, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

NEOS

The Austrian newspaper articles quite clearly state that NEOS have explicitly decided not to endorse Griss, though they “welcome her candicacy (and any other independent candidates)”. That is not a formal endorsement, period. If you have conflicting sources, feel free to link to them. —Nightstallion 15:56, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I've added a sentence about what NEOS *will* do. (It's still not an endorsement. ;)) —Nightstallion 15:58, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

In the present form, it's also alright. ;) Frohe Weihnachten! --212.186.0.108 (talk) 17:00, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. ;) Gleichfalls! —Nightstallion 17:23, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

"The"

What problems do you have with one "the" more, Number 57? Doris Bures is the First President of the Nationalrat (there are alway three of them: the Second President is Karlheinz Kopf and the Third President is Norbert Hofer). And I doubt the removal of the brackets would be bad grammar, I think you simply wanna form the article according to your wishes and use "bad grammar" as excuse. I know english grammar. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 11:03, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

It makes the sentence grammatically unbalanced. Currently the relevant fragment reads "Labour Minister Rudolf Hundstorfer or (less likely) First President of the National Council Doris Bures." There is no "the" before Labour Minister, so the second part of the sentence needs to be consistent and also not have it.

The removal of the brackets is not bad grammar but simply incorrect; in the sentence "It is assumed that either Landeshauptmann of Lower Austria Erwin Pröll or (considered unlikely) Wirtschaftskammerpräsident Christoph Leitl will gain the ÖVP's nomination.", considered unlikely is a clause that requires separation from the main body of the sentence for the syntax to be correct. If you remove the brackets, the sentence doesn't make sense.

The fact that there are at several quite obvious grammatical errors in your response above indicates that your understanding of English grammar is not as good as you seem to think it is. Number 57 11:12, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

"Labour Minister" is a title, but "First President of the National Council" is more a description, so "the" is better to stand there. But if you want, we can simply change it to the official german title "Erster Nationalratspräsident" and "the" would become really unnecessary (like below Wirtschaftskammerpräsident Leitl). And what grammatical errors have I made according to you? --212.186.0.108 (talk) 11:21, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

If "First President of the National Council" isn't a title, why is it capitalised? You then state that the official German title is "Erster Nationalratspräsident", which is the same thing – therefore I would say it is a title. Additionally, we have an English-titled article, so changing it to the German isn't a good idea).

Your mistakes included omitting the word "an" (it should be "as an excuse"), and not capitalising English (plus using the words "would be" instead of "is" in the sentence "And I doubt the removal of the brackets would be bad grammar" was not really correct as it's something that has already happened). I used to teach English so I tend to pick up on these things. Number 57 11:28, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I haven't said that "First President..." would be no title, but rather a description than a title if you use English language. As a German in an English text it's clearly a title, but in german you also say "kandidiert der erste Nationalratspräsident" and not "kandidiert Erster Nationalratspräsident". It's capitalised, because he's not the first in time but the first in order (as there are two other presidents of the Nationalrat). So a change of the sentence is needed, but the article should become anyway totally changed to a form like e.g. the article Czech presidential election, 2018 looks like.

I used "would be" because I doubted that it's bad grammar. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 11:49, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, something we agree on at last. Perhaps a table like below. Number 57 12:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Party	Potential candidate	Current position	Notes
Austrian People's Party	Erwin Pröll	Landeshauptmann of Lower Austria
	Christoph Leitl	Wirtschaftskammerpräsident	Considered unlikely
Freedom Party of Austria	Josef Moser	President of the Austrian Court of Audit
	Norbert Hofer	Third President of the National Council
Social Democratic Party of Austria	Rudolf Hundstorfer	Labour Minister
	Doris Bures	First President of the National Council	Considered less likely
The Greens	Alexander Van der Bellen	Former party leader

Your list is alright, but two corrections: instead of alphabetical order we should list it from the strongest party in Parliament (SPÖ) to the weakest (Neos, who support Griss). The second one is that "considered likely" and "less likely" means app. the same, so in both should stand the same term, e.g. "less likely". Then it's very good. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 13:14, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Why should it be listed in that order? The two comments do not mean exactly the same thing, but I will leave that to Nightstallion to clarify why they stated it differently. Number 57 14:59, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Because SPÖ is the biggest and Neos the smallest party in the Nationalrat. So it's better. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 15:23, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

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First round polls and runoff polls

Please do NOT enter runoff polls into the first round section of polls.

It would be better to create an additional section with polls for the runoff instead (below the 1st round polls), otherwise it's totally confusing to read.

--The Pollster (talk) 19:43, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it's that confusing, but if we do change that, we should do it consistently (i.e., also in the lower sections). —Nightstallion 07:06, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Candidates

I wanted to ask here before doing anything drastic - is there any way we can trim the Candidates section? The list comes across as difficult to read, with all the red/blue links and bold. Also, would it not be better to cover the candidates' election campaigns rather than list names that didn't make it onto the ballot? Fuebaey (talk) 08:13, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't think that's an either/or. Sure, we don't *need* to have all those red links, but they don't hurt, I guess. There quite a few media reports remarking on the fact that there were an unprecedented number of candidates trying to gain ballot access, so I do think the list is notable. —Nightstallion 07:40, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Van der Bellen

I don't think it's a good idea to mark van der Bellen as the Green candidate even though he formally runs as an independent. We should not mix up party affiliation with party nomination. Is there anything speaking against marking van der Bellen as independent in the infoboxes and graphs? --Vogone (talk) 13:08, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes. He's very obviously the Greens' candidate and treated as such by nearly everyone in public discourse. He also acknowledges this himself. —Nightstallion 19:29, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, the current description of him as "Independent (Green)" with the green party colour seems fine to me, since it reflects coverage in sources. —Nizolan ^(talk) 11:59, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

The change has happened after I posted this ;-) --Vogone (talk) 20:19, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

@Nightstallion: Party affiliation does not have much to do with this. In 2010, Heinz Fischer also ran as an independent and has been recognised as such, even though he's obviously close to the SPÖ. --Vogone (talk) 20:22, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

That was quite a different situation; he had the tacit support of the ÖVP, as well; he had frozen his party membership after his first election in 2004; and his electoral campaign was not almost wholly financed by the SPÖ. The public discourse on his candidacy was also very, very different. —Nightstallion 07:30, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree that Van der Bellen is the "Green candidate" and not an Independent. He is funded with ca. 3-5 million € from the Green Party and was their leader for several years. He is referred to by the media as the "Green" candidate. The only reason as to why he claims to be "independent" is to get centrist voters, because the Green base is too small to win 50% or more. So, the templates need to be changed to green and not grey. --The Pollster (talk) 05:53, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

The Pollster: Would you then please also fix all the claims in the article stating otherwise, preferably with a source? The article as-is is full of contradictions with regards to VDB's status, and the mere colour you are arguing about here does not have very much to do with it. Thanks, --Vogone (talk) 23:58, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

The Pollster: Hello? --Vogone (talk) 19:04, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Info on support in 2nd Round, please.

I presume the losing first round candidates and/or their parties normally urge their supporters to vote for one of the remaining candidates in the second round. Could we have this information in the article, please. I expect they have probably all urged support for Van der Bellen, but this is not self-evident to me or other non-Austrian readers, perhaps partly out of possible fear of harming him by making him look like the establishment candidate, and perhaps partly out of fear of backing the likely loser (the 28 April opinion poll shows it 50-50, but professionals and commentators will presumably note that the polls had Hofer well behind Van der Bellen, and the vote had him well ahead, so they will presumably expect that 50-50 in the polls should mean a comfortable win for Hofer). Tlhslobus (talk) 03:10, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

All 4 candidates who did not make it into the runoff did NOT endorse a candidate. Griss said she shares Van der Bellen's views, but did not endorse him. Lugner said Hofer would be preferable, but did not endorse him. Several SPÖ politicians as well as some ÖVP politicians endorsed Van der Bellen - but there was no official endorsement from the parties. The main argument as to why SPÖ, ÖVP, Hundstorfer, Khol and Griss did not endorse a candidate was that they think their voters are politically mature enough to make their own decisions. NEOS-leader Strolz said he'll vote for Van der Bellen. The Team Stronach endorsed Hofer. --The Pollster (talk) 18:04, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, The Pollster. But shouldn't that sort of info appear in the article? (I can't add it myself, as I don't speak German, so I can't easily find reliable sources that say that kind of thing) Tlhslobus (talk) 02:29, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Is there really no other poll available after 13 May? --Dans (talk) 09:13, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

No, there was no poll released after that. Almost all pollsters did a poor job in the first round and they (and the media) decided not to conduct any further polls for the runoff. --The Pollster (talk) 17:04, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Possible vandalism

I notice that somebody has been deleting, and somebody else has been reinserting, opinion poll information. The latest deletion contains the edit summary, "Fake poll, bunch of lies." That sounds like a POV motive for the deletion, so I've reverted it.

That said, I'm too busy these days to keep much of an eye on this page, so could someone who is an admin please step in? Thanks. David Cannon (talk) 13:18, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

On disputed 2nd-round votes

As you've probably noticed, there's a bit toward the end of the first paragraph about two cases where # votes was greater than registered voters, along with sources - a person who deleted that gave a different source that (I think?) chalked that up to computer error, that didn't change the outcome of the election. I don't speak German, so I don't know what's going on, or which journalistic sources are trustworthy - but the way the bit's currently written is certainly not in an encyclopedic style, so if we could discuss this? Thanks Chuborno (talk) 02:36, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes. The source states the official results are due June 1 and the page will be updated by then. It's all marked as "preliminary" still, anyway. --Vogone (talk) 03:27, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Pankaceplace removed the information with the message "Got rid of some garbage from some right wing asshole", despite it being featured in the largest Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung [1]. It says "it's fueling rumours of rigged elections". Perhaps not call them fraud (yet atleast) but anomalies. --Pudeo' 19:08, 24 May 2016 (UTC) I've added a small paragraph back about it, this time in the results section, not lede. --Pudeo' 19:22, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

@Pudeo: This is not what the Kronen Zeitung states. It clearly speaks of a "mistake" and that the turnout will be fixed by the BMI in the official result. --Vogone (talk) 20:46, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, but it's still mistake in the results which is relevant in the "Results" section. The text I inserted in the article states that "According to the head of the Interior Ministry's election department, Robert Stein, the results will be corrected" so why did you think I didn't know they're going to fix them? And that will change the 24,000 lead in the final count which is relevant for us. --Pudeo' 20:59, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance of preliminary results for an encyclopedia, especially not when the "mistakes" which are going to be fixed will not have any impact on the result. The article doesn't mention the slight differences of the preliminary first round results compared to the final official results either. Transmission mistakes in preliminary results are not an unusual thing and especially are not an "anomaly". --Vogone (talk) 21:11, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I guess it depends on how notable these irregularities are considered. Preliminary results always change somewhat, indeed, – but are 146–500 % turn-outs considered normal errors or scandalous in Austria? Reliable sources needed of coruse. --Pudeo' 22:27, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Media at least reports that Hofer accepts the result and does not see any evidence for election fraud. Perhaps that is noteworthy if we insist on mentioning this error in the Wikipedia article. --Vogone (talk) 13:55, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Re-run

Having just seen the news about the election results being annulled, is it just the second round that is being re-run, or the whole election? Cheers, Number 57 10:58, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Just the second part AIUI. Bondegezou (talk) 11:05, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Is that a misprint?

Under the Voter statistics section, there is this: "... Austrian citizens aged 16 or over are eligible to vote...". Isn't that a misprint? Surely they don't allow sixteen year olds to vote for President, do they? __209.179.36.56 (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Not a misprint... yes they do. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the link as I had no idea this was actually the case (although I still find it hard to believe). Should that link be included in the article or am I the only person to not realize it? __209.179.36.56 (talk) 22:56, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

A voting age of 16 is not that unusual. Ghmyrtle (talk) 23:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

number of electoral districts

The election was contested in 20 electoral districts, the constitutional court found flaws in 14 of them. In total there are more than 100 electoral districts in Austria. 213.47.56.110 (talk) 21:22, 4 July 2016 (UTC) Actually, the term electoral district is misleading, it would mean a Wahlkreis in German. The election results of 20 electoral commissions on district level were contested. Austria has 80 country and 15 city districts. Additionally there are electoral commissions in the municipal districts of Vienna and Graz. That would be a total of 123 electoral commissions at district level. 213.47.56.110 (talk) 21:42, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Austria has 117 (electoral) districts: There are 80 districts, 14 cities which are districts and Vienna's 23 districts. Of these 117 districts, the FPÖ challenged 20. The constitutional court found flaws in 14 of these 20 contested districts. --The Pollster (talk) 05:43, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Photographs of Candidates

The photo of Hofer in the infobox should be discussed before it is changed again. I propose we keep the longstanding one (portrait orientation with white background). Please discuss if you wish to change it. BananaCarrot152 (talk) 17:28, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. It's getting a bit tiresome now. Number 57 23:03, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Maps of re-run results

The second round (first time) has the following maps in its section:

Results of the second round of the election by state (left), district (centre) and municipality (right):

  Norbert Hofer

  Alexander Van der Bellen

Would it be possible to make such maps for the re-run of the second round? 193.198.162.14 (talk) 12:23, 8 December 2016 (UTC)