Welcome to the podcast and I check Christophe Horfiger. Hello, yeah, great to see you and great to hear you. I'm an election nerd. I've been doing election forecast for for pretty much exactly 30 years. And this despite I didn't study statistics, I'm I'm actually have a major in, in German literature, but I could never decide between language and math in, in my biography. So I'm running an institute, the Austrian Foresight Institute that does a lot of Social Research.
And we, we have our meeting points between language and math. For instance, designing a questionnaire, what more wonderful place is there where you have to think about language? And then at the end what you get out are numbers that you can build a strategy on. So I have 20 colleagues where we analyzing not only elections, but things like labor market housing. But I have to say I have many passions in terms of research, but predicting and analyzing elections is, I think, the most fun.
Yeah. And you just had one. Why don't we start with the Western election? The polls were quite correct, I think. Yes, yeah, there was absolutely no debate about the quality of polling this time. It was not even a sentence in the newspapers which indicates that the polls were correct, so nobody had anything to complain. Yeah, but people were still shocked with the results, weren't they?
Well, it was, it was a first the Austrian Freedom Party, which we could consider arriving populist party, which now almost every country in Europe and and also the Republicans in the USA are similar. No. And have they had strong results in the past, But they never made it like to the 1st place. They had a crisis five years ago and and compared to the result five years ago, that result was
like also a record plus. And yeah, of course it seems to be yeah, like a pretty, it could be a changing defining time where where things change in Austria. So it was. But as you said, from looking at the polls, they were ahead for more than a year. So it was not a surprise, but to some still a shock, that what the polls had said for months and all and almost years, eventually happened on September 29th. And sometimes, maybe people hope the polls are wrong for once.
Because sometimes they are for, and just to give you a detail, the the difference between the centre right Conservative Party, the People's Party and the Freedom Party was much smaller on Election Day than the polls. That's it. So there was like 4% difference between the polling average and then the actual very narrow gap that happened on Election Day.
So some people thought, wow, maybe this time this happens again, that the Conservative Party is actually outperforming their polls, which they have done many times interestingly. So in the past it was the Freedom Party that the right wing populist that has been underestimated. But in recent years it has been the, the moderate right wing party that the centre right party that has been underestimated. And, and until Election Day, you didn't know if that would happen again.
And if it had happened to the same extent that they witnessed it in the European election, the the Conservative Party would have been #1 and not the Freedom Party. Yeah. And, and, and that's interesting with the 4% difference because what, what I've seen in several countries, Sweden maybe mostly is, is a very high voter volatility in the last couple of days.
People have a hard time actually deciding and, and in Sweden between Friday and the Election Day on Sunday, actually 4% of the voter have changed their minds the last couple of elections. Could it be something like that in Austria? We have. We asked people the the question when they have decided and and we have about 11% of the electorate or 11% of those who voted actually said in the last couple of days. So we do our interviews for that survey in in the week to the
election. So we we could infer that a good 10% of voters decide basically in the last week and there is another 13% who say well, couple 2, two or three weeks. So this is a number that actually doesn't go up. We have here some some interesting conflicting trends and the most striking is that the Freedom Party voters, the voters for the right wing populist movement, they decide really, really early. That was different in the past.
In the past they were not so sure it was new, it was breaking taboos. They also sometimes maybe that was all had also to do with social desirability in the polls, but in the past it took many Freedom Party voters a long time and maybe they they just decided on Election Day or a couple of days before. Now the Freedom Party and it's a big asset for them. They have the biggest share of voters who decide early and also stick with that decision.
That's part of the success. Now where's the more traditional parties? Just to finish your thought, the traditional parties have voters that are more insecure and for expedite the People's Party voters, they also have more alternatives. They think I'll be voting for the small Liberal Party, the nails. So even the traditional parties have voters who decide later, in addition to the young typical parties like the Green Party or the Liberals. That that is, that is really
interesting. It feels like it's the similar thing as in Sweden actually, because when you go for this right wing alternative party, there are different, different reasons to go for them than than other parties. Because basically you have decided that everyone else is bad, the world is going in the wrong direction. It's it's I, I, I usually call them like the emergency brake. And there's not much positive happening in the world right
now. And so, so that's an appeal for these kinds of parties are quite big. And I would guess it's the similar because what would happen in the last time of the election, because I will also suspect that it's the same that people know what this party stands for. But the other parties are trying to find their their new footing, trying to find their new, new, new message all the way into the Election Day. So it's quite hard to say. Yeah, this part, that's all.
We have these kinds of values, but probably the right wing alternative parties, they are the ones who do not have to repeat their values because people know about them. Could that be something and say is the same in Austria? Well, they have. They are very coherent and professional in the messaging. And that means that people have the feeling that they know, as you pointed it out, what they are standing for. You called it emergency break.
That reminds me at a like infamous political ad, but it's very good Democrats like I think it was eight years ago where they actually literally had like an emergency brake in in their ad, which if I remember was banned from Swedish TV, but was a hit on YouTube and the message of parties like the Freedom Party. That's very good Democrats.
But even a movement like Trump, which who dominates the Republican Party is, let me put it that way, a very skeptical attitude towards the so-called elites, but also putting the entire rest of the political system into that elite basket.
So the idea of the Freedom Party and any writing populist party is let's seem, let's make our voters believe that the rest of the political system is not really diverse, that there are even no conflict of interest among the other parties, that they even conspire with each other against US, against the true people. So there is a big skepticism of the Freedom Party voters towards the political system. They are less the least likely to say that democracy is the
best system. They still say to like a majority extent, but they also have the most doubts about democracy as, as as a political system. And in surveys, the if you ask them what's the likelihood as a Freedom Party voted that you eventually would also vote for a different party. And the the the Freedom Party voted, they gave the least indication that they would
change again to another party. They had some big exchange with the center right party, the People's Party under the era of Sebastian Kurz. Sebastian Kurz, the former chancellor, he attracted a lot of voters from the Freedom Party, especially, let's say in two steps to 17 in a regular campaign, to 19 in a campaign where the Freedom Party had a
crisis. But now they all went back and it seems like they went back to the Freedom Party to stay there and they either don't vote or vote for the Freedom Party but don't really consider the other parties of the political system as a true option anymore. Yeah. And that really also seems to be a big trend. And Austria had its political crisis also with Kurds. So maybe they then got convinced that, OK, they cannot be
trusted. So and also that there is a lot of conspiracies because they've got their view of a proof probably with the governmental crisis or what do you think? It was interesting that the Freedom Party was shaken by a scandal in 219 and they actually lost a lot of votes then gains this year compared to 2 elections ago is actually not the big day. They have roughly 3% more than seven years ago, but five years ago they stumbled into a crisis. Video leaked of the former party leader.
He was in Ibiza, he was secretly taped video and Mr. Strafford, the former leader was just bragging about how we how it's basically sell the country to it was a fake oligarch, it was an actress, but he had to resign. It was impossible that he could stay power. And then that shook the party. And what happened afterwards is that then the so Sebastian Kurz got a lot of votes from the Freedom Party, but then he himself that like into trouble for corruption scandals and
eventually had to resign. So he formed the government with the Green Party into 19 end of 19. And the government survived all those five years, the entire period. But Sebastian Kurz could not stay in his position because there were corruption charges and and he's also on trial and the whole thing has also not been worked through the finish line at the court.
So there's still a lot to go. So, but the Freedom Party said, well, you know, we changed our personnel and we closed the chapter and now the corruption problem is a problem that different parties have, especially the info pay the center right party. So they completely, they were completely able to leave all the corruption charges behind them. It's history nobody seems to remember. And, and their voters said, OK, that's we dealt with it.
It's it's over. So it's actually surprising how quickly a party can, like a phoenix from the ashes, leave corruption scandals behind it, which of course has to do with times that are really challenging times where we went through a pandemic, through inflation, war in Ukraine, and where other parties also are shaken by scandals.
I think that's an international trend that parties can stumble, can have a crisis, but can also quickly re emerge, surprisingly and astoundingly quickly re emerge and gain strength because there's so much dynamic with a multiple crisis externally and within the party system. Yeah, it's fascinating. And what is the appeal they almost got? It was 28.8% of the votes I think, or something like that. 28.9 maybe. But what is the appeal?
What I understand it's the immigration and probably crime as well, but what's your take on this? Well, I usually try to look at the party success or what I had a success of political candidate, not in terms of issues, but in terms of the general message and the central narrative. And the central narrative of the Freedom Party, which is similar to to their sister parties globally, is that the so-called elites lost empathy for you, the
voter. So that's that central narrative that those who actually would have to take care of you to protect you have forgotten this because either they're corrupt or they're conspiring, or they just lost their ambitions or like betrayed their values. So this central narrative then is going to be illustrated with the issues. And of course, immigration is something that serves here, but
it's not only that. What we observed is something really a break in the psychology of voters, like a disruptive development that I have not witnessed in 30 years. And that happened in 22, in 22, Russia invaded Ukraine and then we had actually with some already developing before, but then we had a sudden crisis in energy prices and huge inflation. And Austria was hit by inflation even more than the European average. And we have a standard questions where we ask people when it
comes to that issue. Is your primary emotion optimism, confidence the German what is to facet so that the positive emotion, is it soldier in German which is very or are you angry? So we give them three options, optimism, very or anger. And never, ever have we observed that any of the issues had an level of more than 20% of anger
in the population. So even when we asked him how do you feel about integration, immigration, asylum, we had of course, people that were worried, we had people that were confident, but the anger never topped 20% in 22. In 2022, we observed this fascinating and also shocking change that when we ask people about inflation or energy prices, suddenly 50% in the poll said their emotion when they look at that are confronted with that is anger.
We never had this. So all the time in the past, the entire past, we stayed below 20% with anger as a reaction to developments. And now with the energy crisis and inflation, it went up to 40 and sometimes 50%. That also helped the Freedom Party and it's also helping other parties a lot because people felt also betrayed here. They thought, OK, we we have an energy system that that kind of should be affordable. Then they had to pay energy bills that that were almost unaffordable.
And the next year, they learned that some of the energy, energy utilities, part of them in public, owned by the public like state bodies, had record profits. And anger is always the emotion that helps right wing properties movements, be it in Sweden, be it in the Netherlands, in Austria or in the United States. That's really interesting. And it is a mystery that the volatility of the pricing system happening in Europe, it hit the the consumer 100%.
And as you said, the energy companies made record profits. So that it really is a flawed market. And in that perspective, because for the consumer it's a
monopoly. But at the same time, it was not treated as, as a, as a real disaster that was influenced by by war in Ukraine. It was treated as traditional economic terms, ignoring that we had a war in Ukraine, which is I think maybe most voters also realize that this is this is not looking out for the voters best interests, who's working for who
here. I wish I'd had that scale that you did, because it was a really interesting one, looking at hope and worry and anger, because yeah, I'll take that to me actually and see if I can apply it somewhere. That's a great idea. So we, we could compare like the like Swedish respondents and, and Austrian respondents. And it it seems that by finding about about those basic emotions, we we can explain a part of the dynamic and the politics try for decades, try to say, OK, let's be rational and
explain things. But like, especially with the energy crisis, and you've just mentioned it before, nobody could explain what happened in a way that people thought, OK, I do understand in an emotional way, like in a way that I think, OK, this just had to be this way. Yeah. It left them upset. And another and another thing just to add it is. What made people upset in Austria and maybe less in Sweden here was the the pandemic and the reaction to it.
So that that added another component of anger for a part of the electorate. But it's, it's not that big of a part. But my assessment here is that the Freedom Party probably would not be #1 without the pandemic and some of the policy measures and how they were explained.
In Austria, we had a very especially unlucky measure, which was at some point late in the pandemic was a mandatory COVID vaccine, which I, when I heard about that, people were talking about it. I, I tried actually to, I called up people in the administration and, and said, don't you do that, You will, because we did studies also. This is also part of my institute, the Forsett Institute. We investigated how many people are ready to get a COVID shot like a vaccine.
And in Austria we were already at the plateau, at the ceiling. We managed that. More than 80% of the population got at least one COVID vaccine. And when we did a study about that end of it was 21 when we when we had the vaccine, we said that's the absolute limit. You cannot top that even with the mandatory vaccine. That and that just the only thing that did is created some like need perception. I need to self defend myself for those who really didn't want to
get vaccinated. And I'm personally absolutely pro vaccine. I got I don't know how many COVID vaccines I got in my life. And I think it's a wonderful thing, but I actually do really emotionally understand people who felt absolutely cornered when they were told they need to
have a mandatory vaccine. It was like the first political decision, in my view, ever taken in Austria after World War 2. I remember also that Austria were most skeptical to getting vaccinated than most other Europeans or many other Europeans, because I remember that. But also in Sweden, almost everyone got the vaccination because we, we always do what we're told to good or bad. But but the same time there was, it was not mandatory.
So and having this big skepsis, which which I'd love to hear if you have some theories about, but then making it mandatory. I, I agree with you. That is political disaster. You really overreaching your power by doing that. I can I can imagine the reaction. And, and the irony is that and, and that like, there was like absolutely no movement in the vaccination rate. It also coincided with variants that were less harmful. And, and, and the data shows us what happened.
We asked 15 topics in our service about the Austrian election last September, and the the pandemic was the topic people talked about the least Accept the Freedom Party voters. For the Freedom Party voters, it was among the topics they actually really discussed. And then I did a fun correlation model. I looked we have 2000 towns in Austria, towns in villages. So I compared the vaccination rate for COVID with the gains of the Freedom Party.
And there's a huge correlation between low vaccination rate and the gains of the Freedom Party. So I thought this must be some cool variants. And I have to find other variables that this disappears. And I could maybe explain it by urbanity or education or age or income or whatever it is. And it was impossible. So I have like now let's say 12 variables in my model trying to explain on the municipal level, on the city level, the gains of the Freedom Party and still the
vaccination rate. So a low vaccination rate is the strongest predictor of the Freedom Party gains. So of course it's not a causation that if you're thinking causation, you would say, oh, those are vaccinated, they have a chip inside by Bill Gates and that's why they vote for the other parties. That would be direct causation.
So we cannot. So you can we rule out that that hypothesis, But of course there's an indirect position, which is that people who were skeptical about the vaccine then felt really cornered and said what the only party who's like could be on the side is the Freedom Party. And also maybe those were the communities that have like anti system attitude. And so there's a long shadow.
And with all this evidence, I am actually concluding that without the pandemic and the reaction of the government to it, they may have a different situation. Who's number one now? It may have been those decisive 3% or 2 1/2 percent that would give the Freedom Party in the first place.
Yeah, that's really interesting and also just proves that people actually remember, which I think political consultants need to to remember as well, that people actually live in this world every day, not just during the election weeks where you try to tell them how to think or, or act. So, so, but at the same time, it's really interesting. We would that they actually could leave the scandal in that way, but maybe they got saved because other scandals.
Last time we met, we, we talked about hedgehogs and foxes and super forecasters. So, so why, why not touch on that issue a little bit before we, we have to end? Because I think it's I, I really like the ideas and I think good researchers need to be foxes because the, the, I think it's Philip Tetlock, isn't it? Who, who's who's written a book about this? And, and it's based on the idea that hedgehog knows one big thing and foxes knows a lot of
small things. And for us, being in almost every topic during a year, it's good to be a fox. Especially in times like 2024 where new things happen all the time and and society is really mobile and and dynamic. Yeah, and I think you're you're, you even met Tetlock, didn't you? No, I haven't met him personally. I've I'm in in touch with.
So there's the good judgement project and, and this is like a free platform where everyone can join to forecast events and some of those who are very good at the forecast, they eventually become super forecasters. So this is a very small group because the the fascinating work of Phil Tetlock is and and I think everyone should read his work because he made progress with something that otherwise we would still like it drive in the dark a little bit. He was upset about expert
political judgement. We all know the pundits who are in TVA lot and they are so self confident and say, I am telling you this is going to be like that and this is going to be like that. And those who are. And so there's a correlation between self-confidence and the frequency one is being invited to ATV studio or maybe to a podcast. But what Ted talk found out that their predictions were like accurate in in a rate of like 55%, you know, this is like 5% better than the dart throwing
monkey, so to speak. And that's, I mean, that's, that's like the the crass image that says, well, don't trust people who are very self confident in TV that they know the future. And he wanted to systematically evaluate that and and he found out that a system where people, diverse people constantly updating their forecasts and looking at the other forecasts are pretty good if you then
average out there forecasts. And he put together a group and that was the beginning of the good judgement project in predicting global events. And they outperformed the military people who had access to classified information. His group didn't have access to this classified information, but their forecasts were better. So Ted look found out that with the right system, you can just put regular people together and
make pretty amazing forecasts. And I'm, I'm doing this as a hobby and, and I got a lot of predictions out now for the US election. We'll see. I was pretty good in the midterms. I was, I was like in the top percent forecasters in the midterms. But this time I'm not so sure because I had a low probability that Donald Trump would win on November 5. And now we'll see how. I still don't know if he's going to win, but I may have been wrong about this because he may actually win and then my
prediction would be bad. And but I I like the idea of that lock that what you mentioned is that that we never should just be in love with our model. That's the the hedgehog. The hedgehog likes to have this one thing and then he he goes back to his pile of leaves and he's so happy with this one thing and he just doesn't want to sneak out under his pile of leaves.
He's just happy with the one thing some people in academia do, that they come up with one model and they fall in love with it and do it until the end of their days. But I think we, we as social scientists and as especially as forecasters, we need to be radically open.
And that's what he calls foxes. And just to get any information and, and have several models like actually the meteorologists do, and they have become really good at predicting the weather much better than than in the 90s or even 20 years ago. And not everyone has like the character for that because you got to, you know, psychologically, you got to be an open person. If you're not an open person, like being a fox and always getting new information makes
you crazy. So, yeah, but it's, it's a really relevant insight and it's it's it's very good to carry that into any form of prediction. But also, yeah, I guess when you are making a questionnaire and a new study that you would have a similar attitude. Yeah. And that's the thing because although I'm trying hard to not do predictions at all, I'm trying to stick in the, in the present because I think that is my little niche. But you still need to have this
open mind. You still need to because as, as you said before, it's, it's turning into numbers, but those numbers are then turned into two stories and words and explanations. So, so the numbers are just only our, our fundamentals that we, we lean on to, to describe what
is actually happening. And I, I think that is often forgotten with, with, with the research industry that, but then you really need to be open minded to understand, OK, Look, energy prices, for instance, as, as we mentioned before, or, or, or the aversion for vaccination, understanding how vital that could be to, to some people and how dangerous it could be to force such a decision on, on people who do not want to, and, and, and how that is then being strengthening to see.
OK, the government do not trust me. They, they do only care about my money. I should not, they don't want me to vote. They just want me to comply. And yeah, I really love the books from Tetlock and, and also Nate Silver's book is also really interesting from a, from a prediction perspective.
But but same time, most of the things we do are the foundations for the predictions, which going back to the US, yeah, it's hard now because my prediction, although I don't do any, is that the polls are very unreliable and and because it doesn't make sense anymore. Look at the movement in the campaigns. Look at how much money Harris is, is, is getting. Look at the support she's getting from from from popular people like Bruce Springsteen
and Eminem and yeah, everyone. And you do not see it in the polls. That is weird. Usually you see that in the polls to a larger extent. And, and when people listen to this, they, they may or may already know the result, but when now that we're recording it, we don't know it yet. So it's really suspenseful. Well, there's actually 2 explanations for the the stability of the polls in the in the United States. 1 is that actually it's a very polarized electorate, but not much is
happening. The other explanation would be the the phenomenon of hurting that the posters do not really dare to publish deviant results. I mean, there were a few differences stressed out. There were also differences in polls. They had a method of logical debate. Are we using recall weight, actually trying to adapt the sample to the to the election
result of 220? I think now everybody in the US is using the weight is like trying to balance out college graduates with the rest of the population that that was that their big shock in 216 where where they found out, oops, we have too many college graduates in in our samples and no wonder we we underestimated Trump. So there is some methodological
debate here. What I find we will know more after the election, but it seems that a few groups are actually moving in quite some fascinating terms. But for instance, I find interesting maybe also be shocking is that Democrats do really well with young women, but chancy men seem to have like a tendency to to like Trump or maybe try like Trump even more than than Harris.
And which also something we will know more about in in the future weeks, which is also something that would like contradict like a stable image is that the African American population and the Latino population is not secured for the Democrats anymore. And if that really happens and in the end it's still 5050 or like a very similar result and only on the surface it's the same result.
But like below the surface, maybe Democrats have lost a huge chunk of the Latino vote, a huge chunk of at least of the younger African American or the male African American vote. But maybe they have gained in the suburbs and, and people with diplomas. So that is actually a fascinating thing, which is coherent with research 2 authors in the US call it the the diploma divide that actually the, the Democrats have been the party of the working class.
But now they, they, they've become more and more the party of the, the educated elite. And Trump is getting the working class and you see the Uberis Democrats, some Democrats, not all of them thought, well, our society is getting more diverse over the years. We got the Latinos in our pocket. The African Americans are going to vote for us like forever in the more diverse society is going to like guarantee us majorities in the future.
That was the attitude and it wasn't, but it was not a good prediction, as we can see today. No, exactly. Trump turned everything upside down because even the Republicans thought they would never win an election again after Obama. But yeah, and but, but I also, I think the biggest challenge now is, is this is a turn out race.
And, and as you mentioned, young, young women who usually don't vote to that extent, especially if you have a low income and an election is on on a Tuesday, it's, it's not really easy to to to actually skip, skip work to, to stand in queue for hours. So, So the early voting and which has neutralized that issue to to some extent. Yeah, it will be a really exciting race.
And that maybe for us nerds, it will be even more exciting the days after understanding how the polls actually worked in, in relations to the real world. So. Yeah. And just the United States show that we have to be really humble with predictions. There's so many predictions that actually did not work out. In terms of the USI, you know, we both know each other from, from the European Association of Political Consultants.
So I used to be in, I went to this, I've been going to these conferences that I really love for more than 20 years. And and also the IIPC, the International Association, our sister organization. And I was usually talking about our right wing populism, like we had your Qaeda in the 90s. And the Americans listened politely, but it was like, as if I was telling them about like a disease that they have never encountered. And so, OK, are you OK these Austrians with their populism disease?
And everyone listened politely, but no one in of the US consultants ever thought that something similar could happen in the United States. Actually, I also did not expect it and I still remember 216 when all the predictions said that Hillary Clinton would win and Nate Silver was still the closest by saying Trump has a 29% chance and he was better than the rest. But still no one really thought
that Trump would win. Before that, no one ever thought he could secure the nomination of the Republican Party. There was another wrong prediction. He got the nomination. Then the next prediction that was wrong is that he could never become president. Then the next prediction would be that he would like become a normal president once he was in office. But he he, he, he spat out like. A couple of 100 lies every day, even in the office, and then he staged an insurrection.
I think no one would have predicted like January 6th, 2021. Then this year there were so many things that were hard to predict. So the US makes us really humble in being too sure about what the future is going to bring. Yeah, yeah, that, that is actually really true. And that is also why why I'm not trying to do predictions. I usually say that when you get lost, the problem isn't that you don't know where you're going, is that you're actually wrong on where you are at the moment.
So I, I, I like to stay in the moment as much as possible, a little bit safer, but it's still very, very interesting. And maybe that is the time we have as well. And your words were were perfect ending for that, I think. Thank you so much for joining me. It was a pleasure, thank you too.