2012 Elections in Germany

[ingemann]

http://www.landtagswahl-sh.de/wahlen.php?site=left/status_karte&wahl=23

I was just going to claim that no one besides me seems to give a flying chutiya. Three more results in, two safe SPD seats in Kiel and funny ole Flensburg (another SPD gain, with 18.4% SSW in the list vote.)

Flensburg Rural CDU hold.

I do care, I must admit I'm surprised over the good result in Neumünster for SSW , as it lies outside the both the Danish and Frisian minorities traditional areas. Is it a protest votes against the CDU campaign, or is there aonther reason for their good result?

[ingemann]

Why do SPD have such strong position in the north east?

[ingemann]

Why do SPD have such strong position in the north east?

Traditionally strong for the SPD going back since forever (during the Weimar Republic it was generally better turf for the SPD than the Ruhr), and that would have been because it was a Protestant ('rural') industrial area; the dominant industry was textiles. Protestantism in parts of that area (Lippe, anyway) is also non-Lutheran, which may have been a factor early on or something (or so someone claimed in a journal article that I half-read about two years ago while looking for something else).

Thanks,  I decided  to look on the historical maps, and in rural areas it seem that voting pattern follow the pre-1789 borders. The former secular principalities (which was mostly protestant) tend to vote SPD, while the former ecclessial principalities tend to vote CDU. The County of Lippe was Calvinist by the way, while Mindens and Ravensberg (the two other principalities in the corner) was was both Calvinist and Lutheran to my knowledge (as part of Brandenburg), but with a strong Lutheran dominance on the ground. 
I must admit that the fact that 140 year after the unification of Germany and almost 200 years after the complete unification of Nordrhine-Westphalen, the old religious patterns are still so important for how people vote.

[ingemann]

I'm sure the average German voter would love the message that they had to pay more in taxes to send to Greece, so that the Greeks can continue not paying their taxes and use several times more than they collect. I'm sure that message won't won't result in the complete collapse of SPD.

[ingemann]

Isn't Wagenknecht some type of stalinist?

Officially, she's just a communist.

Lafontaine has dropped out, he and his supporters have called on Bartsch to do the same. Bartsch refuses... so far.

Meanwhile, Katja Kipping and Katharina Schwabedissen have announced a joint candidacy for the both chair(wo)man positions. This would certainly mean a distinct break from the previous leaderships of Left Party which were often dominated by old men (Schwabedissen is 39, Kipping is 34).

Is there any chance she (them) can change Die Linke onto a libertarian left/real democratic left ensamble, or is the stasi yoke uncleanable?

Seeing that the old SED types are the only ones trying to compromise to get some of the party's politic through, getting rid of them would just result in Linke becoming even more irrelevant.