Haider will be missed, if for entertainment value only.
Our southern neighbours always have a more soap-opera like approach to politics and Haider fitted perfectly into that.
Strange coincidence, but maybe some car accidents are actually car accidents.
To fill in our english speaking members:
Austria, like Germany, has been ruled by what we call a "grand coalition" in recent years. That means the two major parties of the right and left, the christian democrats (ÖVP in Austria) and the social democrats (SPÖ in Austria) rule together.
The ÖVP quit this coalition and called for new elections, hoping to secure a majority.
This move backfired drastically and the ÖVP lost many votes.
The SPÖ now is the strongest party but lacks any coalition partners.
In contrary to Germany, the greens, liberals and socialists are not that strong and did not make it into parliament.
The only other two parties are both right-wing populist:
Jörg Haiders former party, the freedom party (FPÖ) which he left after some party infighting to found a new party called alliance for Austria's future (BZÖ).
The FPÖ (Haiders old party) got 19%, the BZÖ (Haiders new party) got 11%. Together they got more votes than the conservatives and almost as many as the social democrats.
However, personal animosities between Haider and the new FPÖ management would have made any coalition or even merger very difficult.
With Haider gone, I could imagine that the BZÖ is absorbed by the FPÖ, making it the second most powerful party in Austria.
That said, both FPÖ and BZÖ are right wing populist parties. They advocate tough immigration laws, tough anti-crime laws and a tough stance on Islam.
Economically, they're less clear, some are libertarian while others are quite close to social democrats.
Generally, these are not neo nazis, rather comparable to Blocher's People's party in Switzerland or Kaczinsky's party in Poland or the Vlaams belang in Belgium.
Or even a bit like Berlusconi in Italy, whatever he choses to name his current party.
Germany has no comparable party, the Republicans (german style) do come somewhat close, as they're right wing but not as neo nazi as the NPD.
However, the Republicans are a small party with some regional strongholds but not more than 1-2 per cent of votes on average.
Also, while both ÖVP and FPÖ regularly blast the right wing, both have allready voted together with the right wing on occasions.
Ideologically, the ÖVP, as a convervative party, is closer to the right wingers, but the SPÖ is not as cathegorically opposed to right wingers as you might think.
Also, the ÖVP and FPÖ allready had a coalition from 1998 to 2002.
As I allready said, Austrian politics tend to be somewhat more chaotic and colourful than German politics and surprises are always possible.