German Elections & Politics

[ApatheticAustrian]

my point about INSA being horrible still stands.

12 points chulz effect? totally happening.

[ApatheticAustrian]

this question is nonsense cause over here you can try to balance your preferences out among a set of different parties.

in the US you need to find your ONE TRUE PREFERENCE.

fdp voters would be split between more social liberal and economical liberal voters.

[ApatheticAustrian]

only an useful point if you think, the average republican voter today cares about balanced budgets.

[ApatheticAustrian]

As one of the few people on this board who would prefer to to see a right-of-center party in the Bundestag, I do actually think the AfD would be better off w/o Höcke and some of his pals but achieving this may be close to impossible w/o sinking the entire party.

and that's the catch.

you compromose on that question, which doesn't make you an enemy of liberal values in any way....but it underlines how many voters and supporters of those parties don't detest the höcke wing enough to change their voting behaviour.

[ApatheticAustrian]

it's the anybody but merkel protest vote which was hopeless a few months ago.

[ApatheticAustrian]

schulz is stagnating/losing in the new emnid poll.

http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/emnid.htm

and - big surprise - far-right AfD ideological leader björn höcke participated in a a neo-nazi demo in 2010.

[ApatheticAustrian]

ANY fdp voter who is not voting fdp this time is killing the party for good.

[ApatheticAustrian]

compared to other NRW polls, INSA as usual thrashes the CDU.....never ever the CDU will be below 30 and the SPD close to 40%.

[ApatheticAustrian]

good starting point for a new social-liberal coalition, imho.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Have the FDP moved leftwards in exile?

in some ways, yes.

party chair lindner is talking a lot more about the danger of "big corporatism" and is promoting their social/cultural values much more.

[ApatheticAustrian]

schulzmentum unbroken.

well, i won't believe it before NRW is done.

[ApatheticAustrian]

schulz is a great speaker and rages...

1) against schröder's heritage

and

2) in favor of the EU.

could work atm...we can see hope of change

[ApatheticAustrian]

I think Martin Schulz is in fact originally a Schröderite. But he's now running on a left-wing platform criticizing the Schröder government under the assumption that this is the only way he can win.

well, gabriel did too but nobody believed him.

and gabriel was a good, populist speaker too, imho, even while his decisions as minister for economic affairs have been quite.....unpopular.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Haha no way Martin Schulz isn't a social liberal, despite what he said. The same guy who raged on about backroom deals in Europe during the spitzenkandidaten debates yet received his position because of a...backroom deal. Sorry but I won't believe a word that comes out of his mouth, unless you show me voting records to the contrary.

he is ofc social-liberal but why wouldn't he push back against the schröder reforms if he is able to? he risks nothing at all and would be loved.

[ApatheticAustrian]

would kind of mirror the margin between spd and cdu from the last time and underline how weak green and afd have become.

[ApatheticAustrian]

tremendous CDU numbers.

i guess Afd swalloed linke voters.

small losses for Spd and Green.....only hurting the ego of the SPD but existencially for the Green party cause of the 5% threshold which they - and the fdp - could fail to meet.

this derails Lindner's comeback scenario, Schulz's game changer scenario, the general anti-merkel atmosphere and ...is also quite a bad result for the Afd.

only the CDU can celebrate today.

[ApatheticAustrian]

...is also quite a bad result for the Afd.

Meh, the AfD had been polling at 6% for quite a while there. They will still see this as evidence that they're now the third force in German politics.

well, maybe the strong "leftish populist" western Linkspartei is a way to decrease AfD numbers after all.

They are atm surely the third force, which says more about the other small parties, imho.

[ApatheticAustrian]

You are surely correct, Bumaye but finding out where all those new CDU voters came from could also be interesting for the elections in NRW and SH.

even a strong candidate sometimes can't win against the zeigeist, as the elections of 2016 have proven.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Regarding social policy they are more or less fine, even while a little bit too far on the far left for my taste.

Their foreign policy and their putin-loving is a dealbreaker for me.

[ApatheticAustrian]

who the hell created the concept...of...."nordelbingen"? this sounds soooo great, i would instantly vote for it.

[ApatheticAustrian]

NRW and SH are much more spd-friendly in general, cause the north is more of a SPD bulwark in general and if sitting governors really got an advantage, these times the SPD would benefit from it.

besides local trends, i guess the results underline the weakness of the green party, the slighlty weaker afd prospects compared to 2016, and the need for the FDP to fight for its life.

maybe also showing that the national SPD is overrated but how much would be too early.

[ApatheticAustrian]

exactly what old europe said....and conservatives also use that influence very directly if you remember ZDF and brender-gate.

[ApatheticAustrian]

the cdu is a non-left progressive part, which is pushed to do social welfare by CSU and SPD.

[ApatheticAustrian]

AfD leadership now published their proposal  - signed by party head Frauke Petry -  to expulse far-right leader Björn Höcke from the party and compared him with national socialists/Hitler.

This is going to be fun.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Pretzell is disgusting as a human being, not even talking politics and klonovsky is totally in the right and can easily prove it.