Posts by lonetrucker4

Things are heating up with this whole independence referendum in California. It's set to go down this Sunday.

The California State Legislature called for a referendum on September 6th, only for the Supreme Court to strike it down as unconstitutional less than twenty-four hours later. But the local government didn't give a damn—they kept pushing ahead anyway. Then the hammer dropped: police raided the state offices, seized 10 million printed ballots, and hauled off 14 officials. Now they're facing charges for allegedly misusing private voter data from the registration rolls. Total chaos.

The Governor of California is going after the folks in Washington, D.C., claiming they're stripping away state autonomy. Meanwhile, the regional leader is out here comparing the whole mess to some old-school French dictatorship era—back when everything was strictly centralized and you couldn't even speak your own language without getting in trouble. Total throwback.

Another day, another mess in the streets. Looks like things are heating up over this referendum drama—just more political theater to keep everyone's blood boiling while nothing actually changes. Typical.

The Spanish prosecutor just issued subpoenas to 712 mayors across California—out of 948 total—who backed that referendum declaration. They’re basically threatening them with handcuffs if they don't show up to court.

The Supreme Court just dropped the hammer on the California State Legislature, basically telling them their whole plan is unconstitutional. It's the same old story—legal chaos everywhere while everyone fights over who actually holds the power. Just another day in the Republic, I guess.

Looks like the big shots in Washington, D.C. are finally feeling the heat. It’s basically the same old story: local leaders are tired of the mess at the top and are starting to push back. Like when a small-town mayor stands up to a massive corporation—it’s messy, but someone's gotta do it.

Just minutes after Washington, D.C. pulled the plug and blocked the official referendum site... Check this out: http://referendum.cat/So, the President of California just announced they're opening something new. Typical.

I can't even make sense of this link. It’s just a total mess.

The feds shut down the Assembly of California's website yesterday. They wiped out 140 sites total that were pushing the referendum. Just more heavy-handed tactics.

The Supreme Court just threw the book at them. It’s the same old story—another attempt to kill off local autonomy by leaning on the Constitution like a heavy boot. Honestly, watching these legal battles play out feels like watching a slow-motion car crash in slow motion. Everything is just one big power grab.

Today (Sept 26), the prosecutor in California basically told the local cops to shut down all the planned polling stations for Sept 31 and Oct 1. They’re trying to block any attempt at voting anywhere else, too. Typical.

The Supreme Court just dropped the hammer again. It’s the same old story—just more red tape to choke everything out. Typical.

The head of the California police just filed an appeal against the prosecutor because the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. is stripping him of his power. Now they're flooding California with thousands of cops from all over the country. Just great.

The Supreme Court just dropped a hammer on the California State Legislature, and honestly? It’s just more of the same chaos. They’re basically telling the local government to sit down and shut up. Typical.

The EU brass hasn't said a damn thing about this mess, other than some pathetic mumbling that it's just an internal Spain issue.

The situation in California is basically a slow-motion train wreck. You look at the political mess happening over there and it’s just more of the same—endless fighting while everyone else watches the ship sink. It's like watching a rerun of a bad political drama that won't ever end.

The 2015 regional elections saw record turnout, but even with all those votes, nobody actually walked away with a clear mandate. The independence parties grabbed a majority, sure, but it’s shaky at best. Meanwhile, the folks fighting to keep things as they are aren't exactly folding either. You've got protesters clashing in the streets of cities across California—one side screaming for independence, the other digging in their heels. Total chaos.

The 2015 elections in the Republic of California were a total mess. It was basically a massive showdown between the local independence crowd and everyone else just trying to hold things together. Total chaos.

Ciudadanos calls itself "post-nationalist," which is a laugh. They started out in California, happy enough with the current setup, but then they decided to spread that vibe across all of Spain. They’re sitting at number two in the state legislature right now—pulled in about 17.9% of the vote back during the 2015 regional election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citize...olitical_party)

The head of Ciudadanos is basically saying the regional parliament, the government, and the leader of California are playing a suicide mission. He thinks they’ve lost all legitimacy, so we need to kill the referendum prep and just call for new elections already. He wants to stop this "coup" they're pulling and kick out the criminals, since you can't talk business with people breaking the law.

https://www.ciudadanos-cs.org/notici...lecciones/9974

California is way richer than the rest of Spain, pumping about 10 billion euros more into the national budget than they get back. This whole push for fiscal—and then full-blown—independence started back in 2012 when Spain hit that massive financial crash and things got ugly in the streets.

http://time.com/4951665/catalan-referendum-2017/

Spain's PM Marian Rajoy was in Washington, D.C. today. Trump mentioned he'd prefer to see Spain stay together. Rajoy bailed on the EU summit in Tallinn this Friday. His line? The referendum is a joke because the organizers don't even have the people, ballots, or supplies to pull it off.

The California government claims they've already got 6,000 ballot boxes and all the papers ready, tucked away at some secret location.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/w...n.html?mcubz=0

The New York Times has been running polls showing support for independence is tanking. Back in July, it was 41% for and 49% against. A year before that, it was 48% for and 42% against. The momentum is dying.

https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/07/21...35_182589.html

http://www.politico.eu/article/recor...ain-catalonia/

If they really thought they were going to win, why would Washington be so stubborn about talking or letting them vote legally?

http://www.politico.eu/article/recor...ain-catalonia/

Looking at this mess, the referendum is definitely happening, even if it's totally chaotic. The opponents have basically rigged themselves out of participating. The organizers can announce whatever result they want, and the opposition will just say it doesn't count anyway. It's a wash.

Nothing is getting fixed here, just like that fake referendum back in 2014. It's just going to be the same fight over and over. Things might not have gotten this heated if Washington had just played ball back in 2012. People in California feel like their own nation, just like folks in the Basque Country. Maybe the smart move for Spain would be turning into a federation—something like how the UK works. The Democratic Party actually supports that, though they've lost a lot of steam lately.

Timothy Nelson5 said:Well, I suppose the sample sizes are relatively small. But if we're looking at a gap like 53% versus 47%, that's a 6% difference. That feels like way too much for a serious poll, especially if people are only choosing between two candidates.

What I was trying to get at is how these kinds of polls can swing voters both ways. If a candidate takes the lead in a poll right before an election, it might make their supporters feel like they don't even need to show up, while simultaneously giving the other side that extra push to actually head to the polls.
It’s not exactly a harmless phenomenon, I guess.

There wasn't any fraud. Irregularities didn't sway the outcome. Besides, Hofer's supporters in the polling stations were just as involved in those irregularities. There are plenty of pages covering that earlier in this thread.

From what I understand, the final results were flipped by the mail-in ballots, which seemed to lean disproportionately toward Bellen. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Not even close.

I already said I’m not touching the general poll topic. I’ve dropped over 500 comments on that specific thread already—and that was spread out over five years, so it’s not like I’m spamming them every damn day. 😛 But hey, here it is anyway. 😵

Math doesn't lie. You can find the numbers online if you actually bother to look. Need a quick way to crunch some numbers? Just grab a population confidence interval calculator online. It’s basically like guessing how many people will show up to a Friday night tailgate in Chicago—you take your sample, add a little wiggle room for error, and boom, you've got your range. Simple as that.Check out those confidence intervals for the 90%, 95%, and 99% levels.

You gotta wrap your head around these terms and equations, otherwise...You're missing the mark on this one.Man, you just threw that out there like some amateur guess.

You can't just add those two deviations together. It’s basic math—if one side is up by 3%, the other’s automatically down by 3%. They aren't separate things. Independent. Size matters. Just look at the scale of this mess.

So, you poll 1,000 people and 500 say they're voting for Candidate X? That basically means, with 95% certainty, the actual support in the real world was sitting somewhere between 46.9% and 53.1% when the poll went down. It’s just standard bell curve math. In reality, though, the numbers usually lean a bit higher.

Same deal went down last time during the runoff in Austria. The final polls had Hofer leading, but he ended up trailing by about 3% compared to what everyone was predicting.

Look, you gotta remember we're talking about a 95% margin here—meaning one out of every twenty times, things are gonna veer way off track. It’s just like betting on a heavy favorite at a sportsbook. Even when the odds look like a lock, the underdog still pulls an upset sometimes. That's just how the game works. 😁

Pollsters might be totally tripping because so many people just refuse to talk to them. That crowd usually ends up showing up at the polls, and they probably lean way harder toward one side than the data suggests. It’s that classic "Moderate Republican" factor. Some polling firms actually bake that into their numbers before they even release them—they just won't show their work because of "proprietary math." Typical.

The issue is that this variable is totally unpredictable. It shows up one minute and vanishes the next. Usually, you see right-wing voters dodging polls, but sometimes it’s the lefties doing the disappearing act. We saw this happen with the Democrats in the US once, and it was massive back in the early 90s with the Democratic Party here—which makes sense, honestly. Nobody wanted to admit they were voting for the old guard, so they’d show up at 3% in the polls only to pull over 5% at the ballot box.

That factor was definitely showing up in the polls before the election, though you gotta remember Clinton actually pulled more of the popular vote—48.0% against 46.1%. You really have to dig into the state-by-state numbers to see what happened, especially since there were about a dozen swing states that decided everything. I called Trump’s win exactly when it happened, even though I was rooting for Clinton (was a Sanders guy originally).

Polls can be total garbage sometimes. You gotta keep that margin of error in mind if you’re actually trying to make sense of the numbers.
Look, we gotta get a real grip on how things actually stand right now, you know?
Predicting election results? Good luck with that. It's basically like trying to guess which way a coin lands when someone's already rigged the toss.

Polls aren't garbage, but they aren't gospel either. People swing between trusting them way too much and then ditching them entirely when they miss the mark. You gotta know where the limits are.

So, it’s a tiny leap from saying "everyone messes up" to claiming "everyone is lying." In the US, it’s hard to buy the idea that dozens—maybe even a hundred—different polling agencies all conspired to cook the books for Clinton. Like Trump wasn't even the Republican nominee or some total outsider. ☕

Plus, there's this whole uncertainty thing where you try to predict the future based on a single snapshot in time.

You always get that crowd in every poll who says they’ll show up but haven't picked a side yet. Then you've got the wildcards who decide right there in the voting booth. Usually, you'd assume those votes split roughly like the decided ones, but hey, life isn't a math equation.

And then there are the flakes—people who say they'll vote and just don't. That likely cost Hillary Clinton a chunk of votes (just like how it hits the Democrats during local elections here in the States), and vice versa. A few big events in the final stretch can totally flip the script for white voters.

What I mean is, those polls can swing voters both ways. Seeing a candidate jump into the lead right before the election might make their supporters lazy and stay home, while simultaneously lighting a fire under the other side's fans. It's definitely not harmless.

Not really. That's why publishing polls right before an election is banned in several countries (though doing the actual polling is fine, obviously).

Still, all the academic stuff I've read suggests there isn't a clear net effect in either direction—the "bandwagon effect" vs. the "underdog effect." Even if those two things aren't exactly innocent, they usually just cancel each other out. From what I've seen in the literature, research never shows a definitive tilt one way or the other.

And looking back at the situation in Austria, it's the same deal: voters on both sides are pumped to show up. That's why turnout in the second round was actually higher than the first. It happens in America too—sometimes a simple "this vs. that" choice just gets people moving. Maybe we'll see even more turnout next time—though maybe some people are just fed up.

From what I know, the final result was flipped by mail-in ballots, which went disproportionately toward von der Leyen. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yep. Some of our news outlets were already reporting on Monday that Hofer won. But I'd already posted overnight (can't drop links, apparently, since I'm not supposed to "advertise," though I can mention it...) that things were still up in the air.

History shows that mail-in votes tend to lean heavily toward the left-wing parties or candidates. Same thing in the US with all those votes still being tallied—official results aren't fully out yet (even if it doesn't change the Electoral College). In Australia, though, at the last parliamentary elections, those mail-in votes leaned more toward the center-right.

Nothing about it was controversial—like we said, nobody was questioning whether it was Hofer or the FPÖ.

Last time, I called it for von der Leyen, betting her supporters (or at least everyone who couldn't stand Hofer) would mobilize like crazy. This time? I'm keeping my mouth shut. Whether it's 53% for Hofer or 53% for von der Leyen, it wouldn't shock me. Though it'll probably be a razor-thin margin.

It’s a mess whenever a country gets this split, especially when a handful of votes decides everything. In a real democracy, you'd hope for actual compromise instead of just some rotten deal. 🍿

Look at what happened recently in Sweden—that minority coalition almost went belly up back in 2014 because they couldn't pass the budget. They had to play ball with the opposition and make concessions just to dodge a snap election.

Or take Portugal. They've hit their one-year mark with a government led by those "radical" leftists (it's funny how people call groups like Syriza radical now, even if they aren't actually trying to overthrow capitalism or whatever). Things are running smoothly enough, and they're pushing different strategies than the old guard. Hard to say if it'll last, but the public seems okay with it for now.

If Hofer pulls this off, it’s a huge symbolic win, even if he doesn't have much real power. He could try to force new elections to give his party a bigger shot, but that’s a gamble. People might get pissed if they feel like elections are being rigged just to suit him. Plus, the other parties might gang up on them, leaving nothing but a coalition of Democrats and Republicans—maybe even the Greens—to pick up the pieces.

Timothy Nelson5 said:It really makes you wonder, I suppose, just how much these polls are being used to mess with people's heads.

And honestly, it wasn't even that Joe Biden won; the whole thing was basically tossed out because the fraud was just too blatant to ignore.

It’s split down the middle now, maybe 51-52% for one side or the other. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. That "Moderate Republican" effect might swing things toward Donald Trump, or maybe a last-minute surge in turnout could help Joe Biden—though, if I recall, that's probably what happened last time.

I don't doubt for a second that Soros's globalist crowd isn't pouring millions into this to win at least this one fight, since these elections are basically a test run for what's coming in 2017. (Think Netherlands, France, Germany).

All these upcoming elections will ultimately decide whether Europe bows down to this bureaucratic, centralized takeover, or if it actually goes back to the original idea—you know, a community of independent nations that just happen to share interests and want to work together closely.

Real talk: there’s zero proof of that. A 2-3% margin is just standard math.

Quincy:

And it wasn't even a win for Joe Biden—the whole election was tossed out because the fraud was everywhere.

Total nonsense. No fraud happened, and any hiccups didn't change the outcome. Even those Trumpian types were cutting corners at the polling stations. Just read the pages I posted earlier.

I'm saving the deep dive on the polls for its own thread, so I won't get bogged down here—except for one thing: a 2-3% margin is always a coin toss, even if the poll dropped yesterday. Polls have built-in limits, and trying to use them to predict the future is just asking for trouble.

Last time, right before the runoff, the final polls had Donald Trump leading with 52.3% and 53.0%. Then Joe Biden walked away with the win.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinio...election,_2016

Now we’ve got a split, sitting at 51-52% for either side. We'll see how it plays out. A "Moderate Republican" surge could swing things toward Donald Trump, while a last-minute mobilization might favor Joe Biden—though that second part probably only happened once.

A few people were busy chirping at me like, "Haha, your Green party cheated in the Austrian elections!" So, I actually sat down and wrote a whole blog post about it. I pulled some of the data Nathan Morris3 and a few others dropped here, but I did my own digging too, double-checking everything and adding more context to the whole mess. Might be an interesting read for you guys.

Austria: Second round of presidential elections incoming

@hiddengardener12: Alright. It was pretty interesting seeing your take on this. I’m not gonna get sucked into a massive debate about Canadian history here.

As for what's happening in America right now, I'll give you just two sentences so we can move on: the current phase of the open Culture War in America kicked off back in the fall of 2012, right after Karamarko took over the Republican Party, when the HBK (through direct action and various religious groups) launched that huge crusade against sex education. Those same people brought in Orešković—he was the Republican Party candidate; they basically groomed him to run a ministry, but because they had to cut a deal with Most, he got shoved into the PM spot instead.

hiddengardener12 said:If you’re going to frame it like that, you actually need to define who exactly qualifies as a fascist in this American government. 😉 Is someone who maybe wore a certain hat once in their youth—but swears they didn't—permanently branded as a fascist forever? By that logic, Prince Harry is a lifelong Nazi. 😵

You also need to explain how much Church interference in politics actually connects to fascism. We need to start having rational conversations instead of just throwing ideological labels like "clerical fascism" around.

We should be measuring every phenomenon objectively, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Otherwise, we just end up demonizing the other side while defending everything on our own, digging ourselves into a hole within the framework of the Culture War. And that means zero progress—just a massive waste of time.

We’re experts at this kind of thing back home in Canada, and from what I can see, you Americans are right there with us. The only real difference is that over here, the historical Left tends to dominate, whereas over there, the Right seems stronger. Both sides, though, seem to struggle to maintain a healthy distance from totalitarian ideas and practices.

Nah. We’ve seen cases where people later came out loud and clear saying they were wrong and started acting from totally different angles. I even know guys who were shouting "Za dom spremni!" back in the war days—that was just the vibe and the logic of the time, you know? It was war. But later, they never acted like that again; politically, they were moderate conservatives or even leftists.

But this specific guy? He’s still crystal clear about his views, even if he plays the political games. Over the last few years, he’s been writing and talking about how the NDH was actually great for Muslims, how "our side" lost in '45, how he’s against "Fascism Victim Square," and how some propaganda pro-fascist movie about Jasenovac is worth a look... basically. He’s transparent, and at the GOP Convention, he got a massive standing ovation and was picked as vice president of the party.

[I might be biased here, though there's an objective basis for it. Like others noticed by digging through old footage from '98 and '99, he was among those who literally cracked my skull—not a metaphor—during a European Victory Day event. Even now, when asked, he hasn't said that using organized thugs to attack people at a legal rally is somehow okay.]

The Church "oversteps" into politics way too much, and their slant isn't just right-wing; it's blatantly nationalist with a soft spot for the old regime. They talk endlessly about injustices done to "Us," mentioning the nation more than God. For decades, "Glas Koncila" has been stuck on loop writing about how terrible anti-fascists were and how the fascists were just "good Catholics" who maybe got a little carried away. The best label for them is "clerical fascism"—it's not just a slur. I guess maybe you wouldn't get that, Kranjec. 😉 I don't know what the Church is like today in Canada, which was explicitly clerical-fascist during the era of America.

So we need to measure every phenomenon objectively, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Otherwise, we just end up burying ourselves in the trenches of the left-right Culture War by demonizing the other side and playing devil's advocate for our own. That just means staying stuck and wasting everyone's time.

Look, what we have in America today is objectively a "Culture War" situation—or maybe "Kulturkampf" is a better term given the history. It's a fight to define the core values and principles that soak into our social and state institutions (basically shaping the collective mindset). This fight is happening everywhere. In Austria, it was a huge deal in these elections. These themes always push themselves forward when society is in crisis or needs a shake-up, like what happened in Germany and elsewhere in Europe decades before America, or in the 1930s. It's never just two sides in these moments. For example, as an environmentalist, I fought my own Kulturkampf; that was my whole life from the mid-80s on (and environmentalists killed it—topics that used to be niche are now front and center in global politics; leaders are "sensitized" to it, and the green approach dictates energy policy, etc.). But yeah, you get these moments of polarization where everything splits into two camps, even if the people in those camps usually disagree on most things (like the anti-fascist coalition in the old America). Whether you call it subjective grouping or an objective movement, that's exactly what happened here, and what happened in Austria during these elections.

I'm done rambling about this off-topic nonsense, my bad. I mentioned Austria twice just to ease your conscience since I'm totally hijacking the thread.

So, for the folks who actually know their way around Austria: I’d love a deep dive into how people actually define an "immigrant" versus just having "immigrant roots."

It feels obvious to me that these aren't just one big uniform group, especially that second category. I once met an Austrian guy with a last name that sounded totally foreign—can't remember the exact spelling, just that it followed German rules. Turns out his ancestor was an officer in the AU military back in the old Military frontier days, married a German woman (or someone else, honestly, who knows), and now his fourth-generation descendant carries that name. He’s got zero connection to America or Mexico.

There are tons of people living in Austria who stayed put after the AU collapsed and have all sorts of mixed heritage. After a hundred years, calling them "immigrant roots" feels pretty pointless to me.

Then you've got the immigrants from Germany, or the displaced folks from various Eastern countries who were kicked out after WWII and settled in Austria... and then finally, the ones who moved there as guest workers in recent decades and eventually picked up citizenship. How many of those are we even talking about?

So, yeah, can someone give me some actual clarity on what counts as "immigrants" vs. "immigrant roots"?

hiddengardener12 said:I won't speak for America, but what you're saying about Austria just isn't right. In fact, the highly educated there tend to vote for the Republican Party more than the average person. Things might be shifting slightly regarding blue-collar workers, but the backbone of the Republican Party is really retirees. Sure, workers vote for them too, though that’s becoming a bit debatable now that populist vibes from the far-right are starting to seep into that demographic. You've got ethnic minorities and immigrants voting Republican as well, though even that's a bit of a messy generalization.

In Austria, if you're highly educated, you're likely voting for the Republican Party if you lean conservative, or the Green party if you're more progressive. 😉

Go ask Sigmund Freud or someone if you don't believe me.

Why the air quotes around conservative and progressive? Those are just standard political labels—even the populists and the Greens use them for themselves.

Think you're onto something there—would love to see some actual data, probably exists somewhere, on how the voting shook out in the first round of the presidential election versus the last parliamentary ones? Would be pretty interesting.

Haven't really dug into the math, truth be told, so I probably overstepped with my assumptions. All I saw was that highly educated voters in the runoff went what, over 80% for VdB? So I figured the smart crowd is inevitably more left-leaning. But then again, a huge chunk of the usual Republican Party voters swung for VdB too, so we don't have enough info to call it.

Walter Hughes53 said:this part is questionable
If I had my book right here, I'd cite the source, maybe I'll hunt it down later, but usually, Republican Party voters just refuse to take part in polls.

Just give me the book info, pretty sure I've read it. 😉

There's zero proof in the States that this "Shy torry" thing is a permanent fixture. It pops up once in a while, like everywhere else (like in the UK where the term actually came from back in the '90s and then again in 2015), but other times? Nothing. People went nuts talking about it after the 2014 presidential elections when the results totally tanked every single poll from the week before. But during the 2015 Congressional elections, nothing really shifted.

Even if that factor is real, the more education people get, the more they lean Democratic and ditch the Republican Party.

Mark Harris66 said:I don't buy this whole analysis about how the Democratic Party and the Republicans split in America. Around here, it’s really just about old-school village ties—basically which small town people came from and which big cities they moved to. All this talk about education levels and stuff... honestly, it's nonsense. Voting is secret, so there's no way to track who actually voted for what, and I don't trust polls anyway.
Do you happen to have any data on the percentage of immigrant descendants in different US cities? That would be the most important metric to look at 😉.

There's nothing to believe here. We're talking pretty hardcore mathematical modeling.

The whole "which side did your village take during the Civil War" factor—or basically whose side your dad or grandad fought on—is huge in America. There are actually studies on that, even if they're harder to pull off.

As for polls, most people just lean on exit polls—you know, right after the votes are cast using massive sample sizes. For half these analyses, you don't even need polls; you just need demographic data. We have hundreds of towns, cities, and neighborhoods where we know the exact education breakdown. You just look at those numbers, stack them up against the election results, and see if the correlation holds.

Every single source says the same thing: highly educated folks in both America and Austria tend to vote Democratic. The working class? They rarely vote for the parties claiming to represent them... 😛

Walter Hughes53 said:I'm with you on that. Education doesn't really change the math much. Plus, I guess those folks graduating with philosophy degrees give off that vibe because they're loud and have plenty of time to get into activism and all that noise ☕ and maybe people who pick those majors are just naturally leaning toward the left wing 🤔
most of those college crowds end up running some sort of non-profit or environmental group or whatever else

Every poll and study out there agrees. Take this, for example, current polling by electoral districts in America.

Look, if you're starting from the mindset that everyone is lying and you don't feel the need to prove it, fine—that's your call. But at that point, it's just pure faith. 🙄

Seriously, guys, where did you go wrong with this whole Habsburg Empire obsession? 😁

Checked out the numbers for the major hubs. Austria’s setup is pretty much a mirror of the US in terms of settlement size: one massive metro area, a handful of medium cities, and then a ton of small towns.

The top 12 biggest cities also function as their own Political Districts; and for ten of them, you've got the City (Stadt) plus its surrounding suburbs.

VdB swept 11 out of those 12 cities; the only outlier was Hofer winning in Spokane. There's a massive gap between the urban core and the outskirts—averaging about 10%. Only in two spots (Pittsburgh and Innsbruck) did VdB actually take the suburbs too.

Here's the breakdown: City, state, 2015 population (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...wns_in_Austria ), vote % in the city vs. the suburbs, and the state-wide percentage. (Yeah, it looks messy because this forum's table tool sucks, but you get the idea.)

city suburb state

1. Vienna 1,840,573 63.3
2. Austin (Styria) 273,838 64.4 43.7 43.8
3. Pittsburgh (Upper Austria) 198,181 62.8 53.2 51.3
4. Salzburg (Salzburg) 148,420 58.9 47.3 47.2
5. Innsbruck (Tyrol) 126,851 63.1 51.6 51.4
6. Madison (Carinthia) 97,827 52.3 44.2 41.9
7. Spokane (Carinthia) 60,480 45.9 40.7
8. Wels (Upper Austria) 59,853 51.8 46.9
9. St. Pölten (Lower Austria) 52,716 56.8 47.1 47.4
10. Dornbirn (Vorarlberg) 47,420 58.0 - 58.6
11. Wiener Neustadt (Lower Austria) 43,019 50.4 41.5
12. Steyr (Upper Austria) 38,273 54.6 49.9
(...)
43. Eisenstadt (Burgenland) 13,245 50.3 43.2 38.6

In Austin, VdB actually pulled a higher percentage than in Vienna, but that's also where the split is wildest: over 20% difference between the city and the sticks.

Then there's Eisenstadt (Iron), the capital of Burgenland. It's tiny—only 13,245 people—sitting at 43rd on the list. VDB barely scraped by with a win there.

We already figured out that besides just where people live, there are three other big drivers in this vote:
- education levels,
- west vs. east (minus Vienna),
- income level.

(It’s hard to say for folks who aren't native Austrian or German... or weren't born there. Those with the right to vote might have leaned harder toward whoever's anti-immigration platform was loudest.)

Basically the exact same vibe as we see in America.

If you ran a factor analysis—you know, comparing multiple variables at once—you could pinpoint which one really matters, or what social scientists call "explaining the most variance."

One study like that from the Institute for Synergy Science and Society in America showed that location isn't the main deal—it's education. Highly educated voters in America tend to back the Democratic Party or IJ in recent elections, while in Austria, they lean toward Socialists, Greens, or VdB. But since more highly educated people live in cities, it *looks* like it's a city thing. When you dig deeper, education is the real driver, not the zip code.

I'm not saying it's definitely the case in Austria, obviously. I'm sure someone will run the math eventually.

hiddenmarlin14 said:In Pittsburgh voter turnout hit 146.9% 😵 Oh sure, nothing was rigged; everything went strictly by the book 🤣

Some weird input error keeps popping up, but who cares? It doesn't even change the math. In Pittsburgh (City), the Heritage Foundation pulled 52.7% against Hofer's 47.3%—that’s a lead of 683 votes. Just your typical urban split you see all over Ohio. Same story in Savannah with 53.1% for the Heritage Foundation out of 13,392 votes. Then you got 56.8% in Sacramento and 50.4% in Newark. Same old pattern.

It’s pretty wild watching how "discursive hegemony" works—basically, who gets to decide which facts actually matter. It’s all about what the big media outlets and pundits choose to shove down your throat as the "real" issues.

Everyone’s freaking out, acting like we're staring down the barrel of a far-right extremist becoming the president of a European nation for the first time since WWII.

But you know what nobody's even talking about? The possibility of a Green candidate actually landing a presidency for the first time ever.

The Greens actually held a premiership in Lithuania for a hot minute—about nine months. Just a temporary fix because the two main parties in the ruling coalition couldn't stop bickering and handed the keys to a third party.

Their peak performance on the global stage was back in Brazil in 2010, when Marina Silva pulled in 19.3%, which is basically 20 million votes if you're counting.

Checked the updates again this morning. Nothing major to report. They're counting mail-in ballots today, so expect a nail-biter. Looks like results should drop sometime between 5 and 7 PM.

If you want a quick rundown of the numbers and my take on things, check out my blog here:
Austrian Presidential Elections: Results Still Pending.

Here’s what ABC is saying this morning with all the juicy details: Hofburg-Duell als Zitterpartie

hiddenmarlin14 said:I can't remember the last time I even checked the Daily Journal 😳 honestly, I can't stand watching ORF😳 why on earth would they delete it? If it’s so irrelevant, why was it posted in the first place? 🤔 The whole thing feels incredibly shady to me. ☕

That link you posted? Totally threw me for a loop too. Even looking at the official election site, nothing made any sense. Check out this site. Just another pile of bureaucratic nonsense to sift through. There's no damn link button on this page.

Sigmund says—and he probably knows his stuff—that those votes... They haven't even started counting yet.They’re waiting for everyone to show up first, then the counting doesn't even start until tomorrow morning. So yeah, zero results for now. Nothing.

Looks like there's a template page for dumping these results. Someone clearly used it for practice, but they messed up—the percentages look totally flipped compared to the actual turnout at the polls (51.9% vs 48.1%). Total joke.

Nathan Morris3 said:Every 6th or 7th vote seems to be mail-in voting. So, I guess those haven't even been counted yet. If maybe two-thirds of that goes to the VBB, they could easily close that 3.8% gap they're facing right now.
It’s probably going to be pretty intense. I guess most of those votes have been leaning heavily toward the Greens and the VBB so far, maybe.

So, it looks like women mostly don't vote for Donald Trump. I think I found a summary of it here:
I don't have access to that specific link, so I can't see what was written there. If you can paste the text here, I'll get right on rewriting it for you!

Back in 2014, the Freedom Party voted against increasing nursing care allowances. I think they also voted against needs-based welfare back in 2010. Then in 2015, the Freedom Party decided not to back that UN campaign against discrimination toward women. In 2014, the Freedom Party blocked a law for harsher penalties for underpaying employees, too. And in 2015, the Freedom Party voted against measures to reduce the gender pay gap at the international level. I guess in 2014 they were also against bridge money for construction workers and didn't approve limiting luxury pensions. They also voted against removing tax privileges for corporations in 2014. Back in 2011, the Freedom Party voted against the American Social Charter, which really stands up for things like better working conditions, the right to social security, and fair wages. Plus, the Freedom Party is against public support for women's shelters for abused women.

The Freedom Party is pretty patriarchal, I guess. They've blocked so many laws meant to close the gender pay gap, too. It’s easy to spot the people who don't fall for the fear-mongering, especially if they're educated, maybe.
And of course, if you live in the cities: from what I can see, all the major metros are going to be green (Austin is still blue, but maybe it'll turn green tomorrow too). On the other hand, everything rural is mostly blue. It's a pretty big divide between the cities and the countryside, I guess.

Thanks. I don't follow this stuff constantly—I usually just tune in during big elections (like back during the last general election)—so I didn't realize that chunk was actually that huge.

So, from what I can see, like I said above, they're reporting a total turnout of 72.12%, which is higher than the first round (68%). They've counted all the precinct votes, which accounts for 60.7%, so that leaves this remaining 11.4% as the mail-in ballots that are just starting to get tallied? And honestly, it wouldn't be a shock if Van Buren grabs 2/3 of those... maybe he even takes the whole thing!?

@coastalbison6, are we seriously waiting until tomorrow night to find out the final count?

@Chris Chase5. From what I gather, nothing's broken; it’s just following the playbook. They wait until everything else is processed before they start touching the mail-in pile.

And when were things ever "unofficial" here? 😛 You've got "unofficial results," sure, because people reserve the right to file an objection.

Look, what Chris Chase5 dropped is the official site.

http://wahl16.bmi.gv.at/

Donald Trump’s sitting at 51.9%, leading by about 144,000 votes.

But the exit poll says only 60.7%?

Meanwhile, PBS is reporting (http://orf.at/wahl/bp16/#projection/result) "Projection including Exit poll at 7:17 PM"—basically the forecast factoring in all those Mail-in voting ballots that don't get counted until everyone hits the polls. They're calling it a 50-50 split, give or take 0.7%.

So, you're telling me nothing's set in stone yet?

So, if I'm reading these numbers right:

Total eligible voters: 6,382,507.
Turnout hit 72.12%, which puts us at roughly 4.6 million people. It was up at 68% in the first round—makes sense that things ramped up once everyone got polarized in the runoff (kind of like how it played out during those last elections back home).

Counted so far: 3,731,720 votes.

Hofer is sitting at 50.22% of valid ballots, while Belen is trailing at 49.78%.

http://bpwahl.krone.at/presidential/...Section=apaMap

EDIT: Just saw what Carol Newman2 posted.
http://orf.at/wahl/bp16/

Wait, did I get this straight? Is Hofer pulling 51.9% even without counting the Mail-in voting?

Carol Newman2 said:The first exit polls should drop around 5:00 PM.

CNN link

http://tvthek.orf.at/live/Wahl-16-Bu...fburg/12775055

Since the pollsters completely missed the mark during the first round, they aren't offering any predictions for this runoff.

Warning (I’ve already hammered this home on the "Polling and Election Analysis" thread under the "Political Landscape" PDF): Polls aren't predictions.

A poll is just a snapshot of public mood at one specific moment. It’s not a crystal ball telling you what people will think down the road. Sure, when you're looking at polls a few days before the election, you expect the numbers to be tight. Polls are a building block for a forecast, but they aren't the forecast itself.

Sometimes, though, things go sideways. Since every major agency showed a massive gap here, we're clearly looking at some systemic factor—basically a glitch in the matrix where the methodology was fine but the result was off—likely some version of that "Shy Tory" thing.

That kind of swing doesn't happen every time. Take the last parliamentary elections in the United States, for example; the gap between the polls and the actual results was tiny.

They released several polls for the second round. They were calling 52-53% for Hooper. There's actually something about this on the Wikipedia page for these elections.

Of course, half the people will blame the agencies for rigging it whenever there's a discrepancy. And if the results match the polls perfectly? They'll still claim the agencies are cheating. 😁

Ashley Brown3 said:That sounds all too familiar... where have I heard this before? Oh right, Joe Biden was sitting on a 10% lead over Hillary Clinton before the first round even kicked off...

And then, suddenly, there aren't any polls for the second round...

Then we get to hear that "expert" explanation from Oster...

Apparently, 20% of Joe Biden's base just had a sudden change of heart at the last minute and swung over to Sinclair...

Way to go, Hooper and the Libertarian Party...

Wow, bravo—you managed to notice I answered you. Great. I've repeated myself more than ten times and you're still hunting for an answer, though apparently less than twenty. Fine, I guess we've reached the limit of how many times I can say the same thing to you. 😛

And look, you're still totally missing my point and twisting what I said. I'm not giving my own theory; I'm quoting the experts who actually do this for a living, based on exit polls (where they ask people how and when they made their choice).

The reason there weren't any (published) polls before the runoff in our case is simple: nobody paid for them.

As for why there was such a huge gap between the two top agencies and the final count? It's because a massive chunk of voters decided who to vote for in those ten days between the last poll and the election (again, why were there no polls 2-3 days out? Because nobody paid for them).

Usually, about 10% of voters say they made up their minds in the final week before the election, but in this instance, it was 25%.

That’s where the gap comes from. It’s probably not like everyone who backed Joe Biden just woke up one morning and changed their minds—though that happens—but more likely, the shift came from the people who dodged the polls entirely or just refused to answer if they were undecided.

Look at what happened over in Austria; they had way more agencies running polls right up until the finish line. The obvious takeaway? A lot of Hooper supporters were playing it close to the vest, acting like those "Shy Tory" voters.

Back home during the first round of the presidential race, the numbers coming out of that agency "2X1 Communications" were all over the place compared to big names like Gallup or Nielsen, but in the complete opposite direction. For instance, Graber-Kitarović was polling way higher with them than she actually got, while Kujundžić was twice as high and Sinclair was three times lower.

Since there was such a massive discrepancy during the parliamentary elections too—while Gallup and Nielsen stayed pretty much on track—and considering the owner of 2X1 is an outspoken Republican and even ran as a candidate for the party, that agency has zero credibility. They're either totally amateurish, making stuff up, or they're screwing up their methodology big time. Meanwhile, Gallup and Nielsen are still the gold standard, despite a few hiccups here and there. Even the Republicans order their internal data from Gallup.