The Elections of the Austrian Parliament 2019: Are Austrians Anti-immigrant?

Austrians go to the polls this week to elect a new Austrian Parliament. Immigration has been a key theme in recent Austrian and EU politics. In this policy brief, Lenka Drazanova from the Observatory of Public Attitudes to Migration analyses attitudes to migration in Austria to show that it is immigration’s issue salience that explains the electoral success of Austrian anti-immigration political parties rather than overall opposition to immigration among the Austrian population.

Since the 1990 general election, immigration has been a key electoral issue in Austria. The issue has remained high on the political agenda ever since. In the wake of the ‘migration crisis’ immigration had become the defining issue, and surpassed the previous most significant concern of the Austrian public: the economy. Immigration was also the major
issue in the past 2017 general election (SORA 2017, AUTNES 2017). Two parties, the Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) and the Freedom Party (FPÖ) that took relatively restrictive positions and campaigned on the issue in the 2017 elections gained the majority of the votes (57%). Does this suggest that the Austrian electorate is anti-immigration?

Data from the EU’s Eurobarometer surveys shows that in Austria, as in many other EU member states, attitudes to immigration are actually highly stable and, if anything, are becoming slightly more positive. How, then, to explain the increased support for anti-immigration parties, which are again expected to poll strongly in September 2019? The
answer to this question is the importance that people attribute to the immigration issue, in other words its salience.

To make this point, this policy brief provides a short overview of current attitudes to immigration in Austria and shows:
• an overall increase in positive attitudes to immigration, particularly from within but also from outside the EU;
• the relatively high issue salience of immigration;
• socio-demographic differences among those who view immigration as highly salient;
• the positions on immigration held by the supporters of main Austrian political parties.

This is a part of a policy brief by Lenka Dražanová.