German Elections & Politics

[parochial boy]

Discuss!

I thought the FDP had more of an economically centrist wing as well? Or is it entirely the party of free-market liberalism these days?

[parochial boy]

Why are the Greens so strong in Baden-Württemberg? Is it just a natural result of having large, well educated, middle class populations in Freiburg and Stuttgart?

[parochial boy]

Interesting new YouGov poll:

"Should (insert state) secede from Germany and become independent ?"

32% Bayern
22% Thüringen
22% Saarland

(...)

8% each for Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein & Rheinland-Pfalz

http://www.bild.de/politik/inland/bundesland/umfrage-bundeslaender-wollen-raus-aus-deutschland-52565436.bild.html

Yikes, those are actually really high numbers!

For reference around 25% of Basques or 42% of Catalans want independence. I wonder why there are no relevant "Bayern/Thuringen/Rheinland-Pfalz nationalist party" like here. They don't even need to be full on independence, just wanting more money and autonomy would be good enough

This really falls under "polling hypotheticals" so treat it with extreme caution. If any of these was  to become an actually salient question, then the numbers would change dramatically.

Eg the UK AV referendum, 60 odd % of people supported AV when it was some distant hypothetical idea, that dropped down to 30% when they actually held a referendum

[parochial boy]

I've got to say; I find it fantastic that everytime an American uses "liberal" to mean left wing, a stream of European posters turn up and start yelling at them

[parochial boy]

We should just start using socialist, liberal, and conservative.  That's what's usually used if I'm not mistaken

Only if "socialist" is solely applied to Germany's Left Party. Because the SPD is social-democratic, not socialist.

Oh no, now that can of worms has been opened too !

I think we should go by my totally objective criteria of "good guys", "bad guys" and "medium guys". Which, lets face it, is as totally legitimate as any other criteria

[parochial boy]

I mean, Merkel's position on asylum seekers obviously marks her out as a massive authoritarian guys...

[parochial boy]

That's a structural problem that can't be really solved at the moment if you won't dissolve the party altogether. But if you split the Greens you'll have two parties which win 4% of the vote each and do not manage to make it to the parliament any longer. Maybe you're thinking now "so, why don't the Leftists join the Left Party/SPD and the Realos the CDU/SPD then?" Well, at the the end of the day the Realos still prefer to the deal with the Leftists within their party rather than with the average CDU member. The feeling's probably mutual in the side of the Green leftists with regards to the Left Party. And why is that? The Green realos don't like the social conservatives in the CDU, and the Green leftists don't like the Castro admirers/GDR apologists within the Left Party. And both wings happen to dislike the SPD because it's too pro-coal. So maintaining the status quo seems like the least bad option for everybody.

As a sort of comparison, the Swiss Green party did actually split between its liberal and leftist wings and the two parties combined do perform slightly better than the old unified version - so a split in the German party wouldn't necessarily mean a zero sum return.

Do you not feel that a strengthening of the Greens "centre" as you put it would effectively result in a party that struggles as voters struggle to distinguish it from the SPD?

[parochial boy]

Once Merkel goes, and (assuming) CDU bounce back to the right, is there any chance of German politics opening up again?

[parochial boy]

Linke - 85%
Greens - 84%
SPD - 70%
FDP - 54%
CDU/CSU - 38%
AFD - 29%

[parochial boy]

Linke - 85%
Greens - 84%
SPD - 70%
FDP - 54%
CDU/CSU - 38%
AFD - 29%

 
 
Damn that's close. 
 
Mine is: 
Greens 86% 
Left: 85% 
SPD: 68% 
FDP: 54% 
Union: 39% 
AfD: 27%

Great minds think alike. It's the only explanation.

[parochial boy]

Linke: 79.2
Greens: 78.1
Die PARTEI: 77.1
Pirates: 74
SPD:61.5
CDU/CSU: 43.8
FDP: 37.5
AFD: 19.8

Standard

[parochial boy]

A new federal election poll out of NRW (the biggest state) for the ARD has horrible news for the SPD and also some bad news for the CDU, while the FDP is heading for a really nice win:



Changes compared with the 2013 result in NRW:

CDU: -4%
SPD: -6%
FDP: +7%
AfD: +4%
Greens: -1%
Left: +2%
Others: -2%

That seems like a surprisingly good score for Die Linke in a West German state - I guess it figures, if they are losing out heavily to AfD in their East German heartlands, and holding up better in the West, their might be less of a divide between East and West than there usually is.

[parochial boy]

How accurate have AfD numbers usually been in state elections?

I am wondering if, as they are a relatively "new" party with a somewhat less settled voter base (ie most of their voters this time round won't have been 2013 AfD voters) they might be somewhat harder to poll - which means their numbers could be off in one direction or the other.

Looking at the recent polling, there does seem to be more volatility in the the AfD numbers than any other party (except perhaps CDU/CSU)

[parochial boy]

Thanks Palandio. I guess that would seem to indicate that the AfD numbers are fairly accurate. Although, having said that pollsters have found a model that works for state elections, that still *may* not work for the Federal elections.

If (I assume) state elections tend to have a higher protest vote, or lower turnout, than the Federal election, it could still be the case that weighting the AfD as if it is a state election might lead to pollsters overrating the AfD score.

[parochial boy]

By the way, this topic has surpassed the France 2012 election thread in views and is now the most-viewed thread on the International Elections board ever. 🤗🏆

France 2017 got deleted tho.

too many #hottakes about how Marine Le Pen was the real left winger

[parochial boy]

By the way, this topic has surpassed the France 2012 election thread in views and is now the most-viewed thread on the International Elections board ever. 🤗🏆

France 2017 got deleted tho.

too many #hottakes about how Marine Le Pen was the real left winger

It's a shame because I liked the comment of some R-XX guy saying that with Fillon doing badly the French Right should look for up and coming patriotic figures or something and cited Jean-François Copé as an example...that was a genuinely funny post.

Wasn't that Kingpoleon? I remember asking for potential future LR candidates and he responded with naming some people of which even I knew that just wasn't going to happen (I believe he even cited Dupont-Aignan, but I'm not sure). It also could have been someone else though.

Well to be fair, no-one would have predicted that Flanby would win a second term; and that's basically what happened...

[parochial boy]

Well to be fair, no-one would have predicted that Flanby would win a second term; and that's basically what happened...

...? What are you referring to here?

Certain misinformed left wing wags might be tempted to claim that, from a policy perspective, Macron's presidency is merely a continuation of Hollande's,but with a different face.

A flanby is a sort of pudding that has custard at the top and caramel at the bottom.
Like this:

[parochial boy]

Left-wing wags you say...

Joe Cole's wife.

I'll stop now

(But in many respects, for example, the labour reforms Macron is trying to push through are actually less bad than the loi el khomri would have been. Macron may be a convinced liberal where Hollande wasn't one; but Hollande's liberal turn bears a huge responsibility for the mess the French left is currently in, and it is Hollande after all, who made Macron his economy minister and set him up to be where he is)

[parochial boy]

Here are the results of the Wahl-O-Mat:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=272895

Take a guess on which party is the best fit for this forum...

NPD?

[parochial boy]

So, I am a little bit surprised that it looks like the Linke is the only left wing party who have held up since 2013?

And I know this is #analysis, but, given that their heartland is the East, which is where the AfD will make the biggest gains (in parrticular among the demographics who normally give the Linke their biggest scores), I would have expected Die Linke to have fallen quite a bit.

[parochial boy]

CSU appears to be softening on the refugee cap, with some stating it was never intended for people whose asylum applications are actually approved. Of course none of this makes any sense, seeing as this kind of cap would only work if you actually stopped an influx at the border in order to not overwhelm the country. But you can't do a thorough check at the border so what's the point in having a cap then?

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/streit-ueber-fluechtlingspolitik-es-ging-nie-um-eine-obergrenze-fuer-die-tatsaechlich-asylberechtigten-15235196.html

Well, anyway...this could make next year's Bavarian state elections rather interesting.

Hahahaha, they will get destroyed in the state election if they take place in the coalition as "thank you master" for Merkel again, without Obergrenze. Just what they deserve.

I don't think it's possible for the CSU to get destroyed in an election. Bavaria...

[parochial boy]

Again, none of this would even matter if what was written in the constitution was properly applied to asylum seekers:

1) Persons persecuted on political grounds shall have the right of asylum.

(2) Paragraph (1) of this Article may not be invoked by a person who enters the federal territory from a member state of the European Communities or from another third state in which application of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is assured.

Correct.

These economic migrants (and most of them who came are) cannot pick and choose the country they wanna go to, just because they think milk and honey are provided to them ...

Asylum seekers have the right to request asylum in the neighboring countries, but certainly not move through 10 safe countries before their destiny of choice.

This needs to be stopped and the only way is to send a signal by cutting down the welfare payments to illegal economic migrants to zero - to scare them off. Only then will the message spread to Africa and the Middle East, where the impoverished masses are waiting to hop over to Europe. And the smuggler's work will be destroyed too.

If I was an Eritrean wanting to move to Europe, I don't think the existence or not of welfare payments would really factor into my decision. The real solution is to do something about Libya, so that it becomes less of a sfe haven for every type of criminal, smuggler and gangster

[parochial boy]

If I were German I would mainly look at France and the UK and say "take responsibility". Merkel was naive to think an EU-plan for refugees could come about, not to adopt a pro-refugee stance.

That would be optimistic to say the least...

I agree with you ré-responsibility ofc, but I think that, no matrix who takes it, acting as if the problem starts and ends at the Mediterranean is never going to solve anything; from a humanitarian perspective regarding the exploitation and enslavement of the migrants in Libya as well as from the perspective of reducing migration to Europe

[parochial boy]

The threshold was established to prevent too many parties in general (not only the far-right) entering the Bundestag. After the last democratic Reichstag election, 14 different parties were represented in the parliament.

 
 
Which is and always has been a cheep excuse. Weimar didn't failed because there was no threshold but because a majority of the electorate voted for parties who actively were against Weimar as a whole (NSDAP & KPD).

This is right.

And if you are really that worried, why not just have regional constituencies with no thresholds? That way you would keep out the microparties unless they had a stronger level of local support.

[parochial boy]

And if you are really that worried, why not just have regional constituencies with no thresholds? That way you would keep out the microparties unless they had a stronger level of local support.

There's one advantage of our voting system over district-only systems: If the turnout in one district is very low, it will nevertheless delegate as many members of parliament as a district with high turnout.

Which would probably be a good thing in that it would to an extent mitigate the underrepresentation of demographic groups that don't turn out to vote (people who are working class, immigrants, or highly transient - all groups that tend to be woefully ignored by the political system as it currently exists).