4.3.2 Issue salience and attacks against opponents While the ÖVP has certainly moved to the right on the socio-cultural dimension of conflict, it is still an open question how important the issues comprising this dimension are for the party’s general profile. Turning therefore to issue salience, we track the ÖVP’s development over time by conducting a content analysis of the party’s press releases from January 2015 to October 2023. Given that the party’s economic policies can hardly be considered radical, we deliberately focus on a limited list of socio-cultural and security issues, namely, migration and internal security, as well as Islam and terrorism. Figure 37 shows the relative importance of these four issues over time since 2015. To make both graphs more readable, we aggregate our fine-grained data and present quarterly figures. Figure 37. Salience of selected issues based on ÖVP press releases, January 2015-October 2023(percentages per quarter). 6 30 4 20 2 10 0 0 201 2 5 01 2 6 01 2 7 01 2 8 01 2 9 02 2 0 02 2 1 02 2 2 023 Migration Crime 201 2 5 01 2 6 01 2 7 01 2 8 01 2 9 02 2 0 02 2 1 02 2 2 023 Islam Terrorism Source: Own content analysis using OTS, a website run by the national news agency APA. The salience of migration, which in our analysis also includes issues related to integration, is primarily driven by external factors, most notably the migration crisis of 2015-2016. In September 2015, at the peak of this crisis, no fewer than 45% of all press releases were related to this topic. This peak is also visible in the The transformation of the mainstream right and its impact on(social) democracy 71