German Elections & Politics

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Ugh, yet another country where I don't feel comfortable supporting any party. Die Linke is out of the question because I'm not fond of the Stasi. The SPD is an increasingly pathetic party that no longer reflects its respectable traditions and rich history, something that really depresses me. The Greens? Nope. The love for Merkel and the CDU in the US sickens me.

At this point, Merkel returning as chancellor in a grand coalition seems like the least bad option but this is very untenable and supporters of a basic framework of political liberalism in Europe or Germany shouldn't be content with this menu of choices.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Here's a fun Martin Schultz fact: he loves the late Eric Hobsbawm. Schultz said "Eric Hobsbawm was a man of extraordinary qualities. His books have greatly inspired and influenced my political and historical thoughts."

Here's a photo of him reading the Age of Extremes.



He's winning me over!

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Die Linke isn't what it used to be.  Plus the 3 parties are already in a watermelon coalition in Thuringia and there have been a lot of discussions between the 3 parties.  I know you're a right winger so I probably can't convince you, but calling Die Linke illiberal in 2017 is false.

I do not that much care about your conventional right-left. I have no problem with the Greens in Germany whatsoever. But die Linke is a very unpleasant group, with very unpleasant ideas.

The CDU is also a very unpleasant group, with very unpleasant ideas from a liberal perspective...

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Die Linke isn't what it used to be.  Plus the 3 parties are already in a watermelon coalition in Thuringia and there have been a lot of discussions between the 3 parties.  I know you're a right winger so I probably can't convince you, but calling Die Linke illiberal in 2017 is false.

I do not that much care about your conventional right-left. I have no problem with the Greens in Germany whatsoever. But die Linke is a very unpleasant group, with very unpleasant ideas.

The CDU is also a very unpleasant group, with very unpleasant ideas from a liberal perspective...

We have a different definition of "liberalism" I guess

I don't think limiting the rights of immigrants to have dual citizenship, proposing to ban the burqa, historically bashing Turkish immigrants, and, in general, treating immigrants with utter contempt is remotely congruent with liberalism as a contemporary ideology. I suppose that it's pretty congruent with what liberalism meant when it was actually a well-defined ideology that influenced the world but  that sort of liberalism is disgusting, elitist and dead. More generally, the CDU is not a liberal party. Characterizing it as one is very bizarre. I suppose it can be argued that aspects of its traditions stem from the DVP and the old liberalism of German Protestantism but it's fundamentally a conservative party. It's changed quite a bit over the past few decades but its roots continue to define the party and those roots are decidedly illiberal.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

While I believe that support for the SPD has dropped over the past few months, from a statistical standpoint, it's clear that nearly all of these polls ought to be chucked into a dumpster. Suppose that the SPD's polling numbers reflect their actual support. Then, they've roughly gone from 20% to 16%. German polls have very large sample sizes so I'll be generous and assume a standard error of 1% - I could probably figure this out precisely but I don't feel like it. Further, I'll suppose that, for each poll posted by Al that the polling figure for the SPD is the actual support for the SPD.

With this in mind, what are the odds of that pattern showing up if, indeed, it was the actual support for the SPD? We can think about this in different ways. First, I'll use a random number generator based on the normal distribution (20 samples) and assume that the 0.5% drop is real for some week, say, from 17% to 16.5%:



Roughly half of the time, we'd expect nothing to register in the poll and, this is what I think matters, in 3 separate cases, the SPD would increase their polling figure. Now, this is a random number generator so this would vary but the point being - if the polling companies weren't fudging their numbers, even if the sustained drop is real, we'd expect there to be a poll or two where the SPD increased their polling figure. That this hasn't happened is extremely suspicious and indicative of a human hand dictated the polling figures.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

But but muh INSA conspiracy; ahkhkchually the SPD are leading the polls right now

Literally no one is making this argument - people are arguing that INSA is a trash polling company.