2013 Elections in Germany

[Hash]

Any idea why AfD did comparatively poorly in Saxony-Anhalt, especially the northern parts?

[DC Al Fine]

I like how mixed the AfD's support is. Baden-Wuttremburg & Saxony

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[minionofmidas]

I have counted now: It seems that 20 members of the new Left caucus have been members of the SED, but some (2 or 3) have only been after the "turn" and three of them have no wikipedia article or bundestag.de article yet and don't state an SED membership on their sites, but have taken seats for the PDS at communal level in 1990, so this is likely, but does not need to be true and the count of "Left caucus members that have been in the SED before the "turn" my fall to 14 of 64. 18 is the most likely number.

How many of those 14-18 were in positions of power?

Roland Claus and arguably Gregor Gysi.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Only few PDS/Left party member of parliaments since 1990 have been in "positions of power", though that depends of definition, because of the change of leadership, platform and function, from SED in 1989 to PDS in 1990.

About the half of them were at the time or had been studiing or teaching members of the "social studies sections" (which actually was a synonym for marxism-leninism) at universities and similar institutions, though, which was a typcial step at the cadre career ladder, so some of them might have been in charge at some point of time, had the SED government lasted longer).

The breakdown of the SED government due too mass protest and a refugee wave in autumn 1989 and its aftermath changed the characteristics of the SED quite quickly. The SED had been the all-dominating "new type" (to use leninist terminology) state party with a membership of 2.3 millions until October 1989 of which only a tenth was left in the PDS one year later with further membership decline.
The rank-and-file membership was mostly discredited due too the collapse of the GDR and their prominent role in the dictatorship (and by the way was accused of a permanent violation of the official SED bylaws, too) - and also very old. So a new generation took over the party that wanted too keep the parts of the SED heritage, that they liked, but change others and had the aspiration to become a democrat socialist party in a pluralist democary (they adopted the name SED-PDS (PDS stood for Party of Democratic Socialism) in december 1989 and got rid of the SED in their name in February 1990, shortly before the first free People's Chamber elections.
Many of the former leaders were expelled from the party or left it by themselves. Only few played a role later, e.g. the former SED general secretary of the Dresden regional district, Hans Modrow, who was seen as a Gorbatshevite reformer in 1989.

So let's look at the brand new elected Left Party caucus in the Bundestag. It's oldest member with an Eastern biography is Gregor Gisy, who was born in 1948, most of them are born between 1955 and 1970, so they were between 20 and 35 in 1989. So the closes they could get on a personal level at this point of time were functions in the mass youth organization FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend - FDJ) - There you have only one: Roland Claus (general secretary of the FDJ in the Bezirk (regional district) of Halle

Then they have three, that had functions on a muncipial or Berlin muncipial district level in councils or the FDJ - but I would not think of it as an actual position of power:
Gesine Lötzsch (city district assembly member of Berlin-Lichtenberg)
Thomas Nord (2nd secretary of the city district FDJ Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg)
Petra Sitte (2nd secretary of the FDJ at the University of Halle-Wittenberg)

Some had administrative functions, like Petra Pau, who was working for the central council of the FDJ.

Gisy himself was head of the bar association of the GDR since 1988 - you could argue if that's a "position in charge", but I don't think so. He only became a political figure in autumn 1989.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[minionofmidas]

Any idea why AfD did comparatively poorly in Saxony-Anhalt, especially the northern parts?

I can find nothing whatsoever. Saxony-Anhalt should be a very good state for a vaguely rightwing protest party.
Seems to have lacked a star candidate, though. The guy who headed the list is a former Magdeburg city councillor who defected from the PDS to the CDU and I couldn't find anything whatsoever on the no.2 and 3. By contrast the top candidate in MVP was a fairly wellknown radio dj. Beyond that, all I can think of is the lack of a Slavic border.

[minionofmidas]

 The West German Left map could do with a few more categories. :/

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The West German Left map could do with a few more categories. :/

Don't really disagree; I'm thinking of doing a separate West German Left map later.

[Yeahsayyeah]

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These parts are very sparsely populated, where the young people left after 1990 and they have only very crappy internet connections there. (given that AfD was kind of an internet phenomenon, younger voters were more likely to vote AfD and a poster campaign works better in densely populated areas were more people can see them). So, if the state party and the local branches were only poorly organized, this could be part of the explanation.

Interistingly enough, DVU did also worse there then on average in the 1998 state election.

Crappy candidates might not be part of the explanation if compared to Saxony. Number one there seems to be a (on her field) reputable chemist and entrepreneur from Leipzig, but Leipzig had no good result for them, if compared to other parts of Saxony. She is also one of the three "speakers" of the party, but I don't know if she is known. I did not know her, before I looked her up.
Number two ist the son of a former Saxon secretary of treasury, but Saxons usually don't know their state level politicians, so I don't think, that counts. What could count is, that both have tight connections to Lucke, so maybe their campaign here was better financed.
Number free has had a conviction of fraud and was accused of lying about that at the nomination convention, so there was a movement to expell him from the party. I don't know if this went any further, though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[minionofmidas]

Contrary to the claim I've read several times elsewhere, Merkel did not win the Union the most votes since 1990 (what these people actually meant is that it won the largest share of valid votes since that year and turnout doesn't matter). I actually won the most votes since 2002. (The CDU alone won its highest raw vote since 1994, though. Going by share of the - growing, however slowly - electorate doesn't get you any other dates.)

[Franknburger]

Any idea why AfD did comparatively poorly in Saxony-Anhalt, especially the northern parts?

People commuting to Wolfsburg to work with Volkswagen realising that their jobs rely on the Euro.
Also, right next to the northern tip of Saxony-Anhalt is the Gorleben proposed nuclear waste dump. The Lower Saxon side, the Wendland, is a traditional green stronghold, Hamburg & Berlin hippie-land, and is culturally influencing the Saxony-Anhalt.

Asides, the more I look at the AfD map, the more I think that they have been able to especially take over small-scale tourism operators from the FDP. If you are making your living from summer tourism along the Baltic Sea coast, you might be anything but unhappy about Greece and other Mediterranean countries possibly leaving the Eurozone. In Saxony-Anhalt, OTOH, summer tourism hardly plays a role.

[Leftbehind]

I actually won the most votes since 2002.

Congrats mate, I'd vote for you!

[Franknburger]

Petra Sitte (2nd secretary of the FDJ at the University of Halle-Wittenberg)

Which is similar to the position Angela Merkel held with the FDJ at the East German Academy of Science.

[minionofmidas]

Fully proportional federal result, Germany 2013

CDU 205
SPD 154
Left 51
Greens 51
CSU 45
FDP 29
AfD 28
Pirates 13
NPD 8
FW 6
Animal Protection Party 2
ÖDP 2
REP 1
PARTEI 1
pro deutschland 1
Bavaria Party 1 (0.131% nationally)

[Yeahsayyeah]

Petra Sitte (2nd secretary of the FDJ at the University of Halle-Wittenberg)

Which is similar to the position Angela Merkel held with the FDJ at the East German Academy of Science.

Yes, of course. The Left party caucus member fifth most involved in political actions in the GDR is as most involved as our chancellor. But may we actually say that in Deutschland einig Merkelland? ;-)

[minionofmidas]

As we were talking of first Black, first Muslim CDU, etc MPs...

the Greens would have needed to win six rather than three seats in Rhineland-Pfalz to get us the first Romani MP. (Unless you don't consider Sinti / Manouches to be Roma. Whatever.)

[njwes]

Somewhat off-topic but does anybody happen to know of or have a link to a good article (academic or otherwise) that explains the historical/political reasons that in Europe generally traditional Social Democratic parties have experienced a collapse in their support, while Green parties have seen a concomitant rise in support, sucking away former soc dem voters?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's a generalisation so broad and so entirely lacking a concept of time that it's actually wrong.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, this has already been covered a billion times on this board (and that's just this year), but social democratic parties have seen their support range (its better to look at that sort of thing because there will always be good elections and bad elections) over the past three decades or so because the sort of social changes - deindustrialisation especially, but also the changing social structure of large cities, the erosion of traditional rural support as a result of the expansion of commuting and shifting middle class retirement patterns, the decline of Union membership and all kinds of other related and similar factors - seen during that period have not been exactly friendly to such parties. They have also been damaged by the shift in political discourse and the range of possible mainstream policies; when in government they have been less likely to enact policies aimed at being nice to their base voters than was once the case and more likely to enact policies that are unpopular with their base voters than was once the case. The electoral consequences of that aren't always permanent, but in Germany (for example) it led to a split in the SPD. Most voters so lost have been lost to not voting at all rather than to other parties.

etc.

Most of this has nothing to do with the various Green parties, which have their own histories, internal and external pressures and electoral relationships with social change.

Edit: that might come across as slightly bad tempered. Not the intention.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Any idea why AfD did comparatively poorly in Saxony-Anhalt, especially the northern parts?

People commuting to Wolfsburg to work with Volkswagen realising that their jobs rely on the Euro.
Also, right next to the northern tip of Saxony-Anhalt is the Gorleben proposed nuclear waste dump. The Lower Saxon side, the Wendland, is a traditional green stronghold, Hamburg & Berlin hippie-land, and is culturally influencing the Saxony-Anhalt.

Asides, the more I look at the AfD map, the more I think that they have been able to especially take over small-scale tourism operators from the FDP. If you are making your living from summer tourism along the Baltic Sea coast, you might be anything but unhappy about Greece and other Mediterranean countries possibly leaving the Eurozone. In Saxony-Anhalt, OTOH, summer tourism hardly plays a role.

Wouldn't a devalued drachma (or lira or peseta, not that that's likely) make its country cheaper for Germans?

[njwes]

that might come across as slightly bad tempered. Not the intention.

Thanks for the summary, and no worries! I figured it was somewhere on these boards but I really wasn't sure where to look. Your explanation is really helpful and makes a lot of sense.

As for the Green parties vs. the Social Democratic parties, I didn't necessarily assume there was a direct, explicit connection between their development; it just seemed to me (and it may have been an incorrect supposition) that in the last 15 years or so in many European countries, the Green vote has increased by quite a lot and the Soc Dem vote has decreased by quite a lot. Given some shared values, I thought it seemed possible the Greens had soaked up some of those dissatisfied voters on the left.

[Middle-aged Europe]

CDU has thrown the opposition a bone and now proposes a raise of the top income tax rate to 49%... which happened to be a central platform plank of SPD and Greens. The maneuvering has begun.

[minionofmidas]

Given some shared values, I thought it seemed possible the Greens had soaked up some of those dissatisfied voters on the left.

And in Germany, you wouldn't be wrong. Though more would have gone into the increased vote abstention rate.