Decisive? – New record Hofburg: almost a million voting cards

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Nearly one million voting cards have been issued for Sunday’s presidential election, the Interior Ministry announced on Friday. 958,136 of the total of 6,363,489 Austrians eligible to vote (15.1 percent) asked for absentee ballots. If participation and response are comparable to 2016, that means approximately 820,000 voters per post. Their votes, which won’t be counted until Monday, could still be decisive in the second round issue.

If incumbent Alexander Van der Bellen is still just under 50 percent in the ballot box on Sunday, he can count on him to overcome the re-election hurdle with the postal vote evaluation – meaning he won’t have to go to the second round four weeks later.

Voting result by mail brought VdB two percentage points in 2016
In 2016, Van der Bellen’s result in the second round improved by two percentage points in the postal vote. In the first reelection in May, which was canceled by the Constitutional Court, voters even reversed the result by mail – Van der Bellen was behind on Sunday and only caught up with FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer when their votes were counted.

A small part of the absent ballot papers is not used for voting by post, but for voting in a “foreign” polling station on Sunday. These absent ballots count towards the ballot box in the federal presidential election – and are thus counted on Sunday.

Voting Cards: The 2019 National Council Election Cracked The Million
The previous voting card record for a Hofburg election was 885,437 (cancelled runoff in May 2016). On repeat it was 708,185. There were even more voting card applications than now in the 2019 National Council elections – with 1,070,933.

More voting cards in Upper Austria than in Vienna
Interest in postal voting has risen sharply during the corona pandemic, in which, however, no national elections have taken place. In the 2020 Vienna elections – where the possibility of “secure” postal voting was widely advertised – about 380,000 voting cards were issued. There are 200,131 voting cards for the current federal presidential election. There are slightly more – 201,859 – in Upper Austria. In contrast, in Lower Austria, the state with the largest number of voters, “only” 151,046 absentee ballots were requested.

Source: Krone

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