AUSTRIA:Although support for the two main parties is likely to hit a record low, the money is on another grand coalition
ASK AN Austrian about tomorrow's election and the answer is likely to be a sigh of exasperation.
The 2006 general election ended with a grand coalition of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and conservative People's Party (ÖVP) but, after two ill-tempered years blocking each others proposals, they walked out on each other in July.
Tomorrow's poll is likely to see support for both parties hit record lows - both will be doing well to top 30 per cent - while one in four Austrian voters will turn instead to extreme-right parties.
Regardless of the final result, Austria's next chancellor is likely to be the brand-new SPÖ leader Werner Faymann. The enigmatic technocrat has dominated the snap election after stepping out of the shadow of his luckless predecessor, SPÖ chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer.
After Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty, the two men suggested, in a letter to the EU-critical Kronenzeitung tabloid, that Austria should ratify future EU agreements by referendum.
Their ÖVP coalition partners walked out of government in protest and the Krone began singing Mr Faymann's praises on a daily basis. Once the slick SPÖ election campaign roared into high gear, the EU was forgotten and Mr Faymann focused instead on the leading voter concern: inflation.
He rushed a five-point plan through parliament with opposition support, along with a proposal to abolish tuition fees while hiking family allowances.
With the 48-year-old Faymann at the helm, the SPÖ has bounced back from two disastrous years heading the grand coalition and is likely to top tomorrow's poll.
Mr Faymann rejects the claim doing the rounds in Vienna that, in exchange for the support of the Krone - read daily by every fourth Austrian - he is beholden to its editor-in-chief Hans Dichand, a close friend.
"Dichand has never told me what streets to build and I don't tell him what he should write in his newspaper," said the former transport minister last week.
The SPÖ leader has ruled out a coalition with either of the two extreme-right parties and favours another grand coalition with the ÖVP, but without its current leader Wolfgang Molterer.
For the ÖVP, tomorrow's election will be the end of a nightmare election campaign. It was ahead in the polls at the time of the Krone letter, but after bringing down the government, Mr Molterer committed the cardinal sin of coups: he fumbled.
"You would expect an election programme, a vision, but for days, weeks, the party did nothing," said Oliver Pink, political editor of Die Presse newspaper.
That content vacuum drew unwelcome attention to Mr Molterer himself, a political warhorse with years of cabinet experience but someone who is ill at ease at large public events and distinctly stilted on television.
ÖVP members battled bouts of longing for former leader Wolfgang Schüssel and his firm hand on the fiscal reigns before belatedly joining in the fray of pre-election giveaways.
The party harbours a faint hope that recent turmoil on financial markets might see a late swing in support for their man, the outgoing finance minister who is known for his cautious fiscal approach. Mr Molterer, meanwhile, is concerned that an SPÖ win will have serious consequences for Austria's place in the EU.
"Austria is, at heart, a deeply European country, the biggest winner of enlargement," he said. "But I'm afraid something has changed in that respect within the SPÖ." Besides economic and inflation worries, the snap election has been dominated by talk of immigration and immigrant-related crime. That has boosted the two extreme-right populist parties headed by ageing firebrand Jörg Haider and Heinz-Christian Strache, a one-time Haider ally, now his carbon copy arch enemy.
Between the two, the far-right is expected to mop up 25 per cent support, 10 points up on just two years ago. "Immigration and crime is such a big issue because Austria didn't follow Ireland and Britain, who opened up their borders to new EU members and got the 'better workers'," says Peter Ulram, a Viennese political scientist and pollster. "Instead we got the illegal carers and other unqualified workers from whom any society would expect greater law and order problems."
One wild card in this election is the decision to reduce the voting age to 16, a first in the EU, bringing in around 200,000 first-time teenage voters. Political observers are unsure what effect it will have, but some suggest the vote will be divided between the Greens, the populist parties and the stay-at-home party.
After a short, bitter election campaign, most political observers as well as ordinary Austrians are putting their money on another grand coalition - and tricky times for Austria's relationship with the EU.
"This election won't bring much," says Felix Merey, a Viennese pensioner at an SPÖ election rally. "The distance between new elections gets ever smaller, but after the election we'll be back back where we were. At the end of the day, it's all just a new brothel with the same old hookers."
