Filzmaier analyzes

Willi versus Anzengruber: a fight without a fight

The candidates (pictured here with their wives Valentina left and Katharina) treated each other "with friendly respect" during the run-off election campaign. Who will be "First Couple" in Innsbruck?

(Bild: Birbaumer Christof)

The election campaign for the office of mayor of Innsbruck has gone into the expected extra time, with the run-off election taking place today. Of the original 13 candidates, the Green incumbent Georg Willi and Johannes Anzengruber, who left the ÖVP in a fierce dispute, were the two best placed. With just under 23 and 19 percent of all votes.

1 What now? The majority of those who voted two weeks ago wanted neither Willi nor Anzengruber as mayor. Not to mention the 40 percent who stayed at home on the last election Sunday anyway. If you add together non-Willi-Anzengruber voters and total non-voters, each of the current run-off opponents has not much more than one in ten Innsbruck residents behind them.

2 Who will win? There are plenty of self-appointed clairvoyants running around the Tyrolean capital who claim to already know the winner of the election today. Because there are only two candidates left, half of them guess correctly. And will trumpet: "I always knew it!" Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with serious election research.

3. who decides the election? Those for whom Willi or Anzengruber is the second preference or even the lesser evil. One can assume that supporters of the FPÖ and the small remnant of ÖVP voters would prefer the middle-class Anzengruber. Conversely, Willi would receive support from existing SPÖ and KPÖ voters. However, Georg Willi is not a "fundi", but has for years been quite bourgeois and often even authoritarian instead of grassroots democratic, much to the chagrin of his Greens.

4 Is it even possible to make a forecast? The bourgeois camp in Innsbruck is still larger than "the left". Which would make Anzengruber the favorite. But this conclusion is seriously flawed. Willi would not have become mayor six years ago if he had been elected solely to the left of center. The race is completely open.

Peter Filzmaier is Professor of Political Science at the University of Continuing Education Krems and Karl Franzens University Graz.

(Bild: Imre Antal)

5 Does it make a fundamental difference who becomes mayor? Only on an emotional level at the personal level. In terms of policy content, the party lists of Willi and Anzengruber have a majority in the city government, which is appointed on a proportional basis according to the parties' share of the vote. Their cooperation is therefore likely. The two candidates know this, which is why they treated each other with friendly respect during the election campaign. Either way, future politics in Innsbruck will probably be a compromise between Willi and Anzengruber's program. Not either - or.