Internal quarrels

“You don’t need to hit the Greens anymore”

Greens in need of explanation: Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler protects EU top candidate Lena Schilling.(Bild: APA/ERWIN SCHERIAU)

Harald Vilimsky, the FPÖ's top candidate, dominates the headlines after the first round of TV elephants for the EU elections. "Because he took a protective stance against Green candidate Lena Schilling and did so skillfully by combining it with attacks on the Freedom Party," says Christoph Haselmayer, opinion researcher at the Institute for Public Opinion Research and Data Analysis (IFDD), in an analysis on krone.tv (video above).

The election campaign is primarily about avoiding mistakes and secondarily about mobilizing voters.

FPÖ voters difficult to mobilize
Freedom Party voters in particular are more difficult to mobilize in the EU elections, as Vilimsky also knows, according to Haselmayer.

FPÖ EU top candidate Harald Vilimsky(Bild: APA/EVA MANHART)

"Things look different in the National Council elections"
"In the National Council elections, however, things look very different." The other top candidates had also done some things right because they had at least addressed their own electorate with their respective content.

Accusations against Schilling have political relevance
According to the motto: "The Greens are destroying themselves, we don't need to hit them anymore", no EU top candidate wanted to say anything bad about the Schilling case on Thursday.

Nevertheless, the accusations are politically relevant, explains Haselmayer. "Because they naturally dominate the media." 

You can see how the parties fared on the topics of neutrality, migration and climate in the analysis of the Elephant Round with Christoph Haselmayer in the video above.

Conny Bischofberger conducted a comprehensive interview with Lena Schilling. You can read it on Sunday in the print edition of the "Krone" and in an extended version online.