EP elections 2014

[Middle-aged Europe]

The green primaries are to begin in a few dates, and six candidates will fight to be the two front-runners. José Bové from Europe Écologie, Rebecca Harms and Ska Keller from die Grüne in Germany, Ulrike Lunacek from the Austrian die Grünen, Monica Frassoni from Federazione dei Verdi and Joland Verburg from the small Dutch party de Groenen.

Ulrike Lunacek dropped out, because the Austrian Greens have left the primaries altogether.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Voted for Frassoni/Keller.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Regarding the Green primaries... it just occurred to me that Rebecca Harms is the official candidate of the German Green Party, while Ska Keller is the candidate of the Federation of Young European Greens and as such also endorsed by the German Green Youth.

The German Green Youth's support for Keller is pretty blatant on their website, right in the startpage. Their mother party's suport for Rebecca Harms is certainly more restrained, but still visible: You've got to go to the article on the European primaries and scroll to the bottom of the page to find the endorsement for Harms.

http://www.gruene.de/themen/europa/green-primary-du-entscheidest-europa/rebecca-for-europe.html

http://www.gruene-jugend.de//node/26648#gothere

Somewhat unusual that the Green Party and their youth organization are openly competing with each other in that manner.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Well, Rebecca Harms could be seen as the pro-establishment candidate, while Ska Keller is vastly considered the anti-establishment candidate. Harms puts an emphasis on ecology, Keller on human rights/refugees/Frontex etc.

Like I said, Keller is supported by the Green Youth and the Green Youth is generally seen as being a bit more left-wing than its mother party. Personally, I wouldn't say that there are a lot of ideological differences between the two candidates though.

In essence, Harms is the Hillary and Keller is the Obama.

[Middle-aged Europe]

[Middle-aged Europe]

Why in the world would anyone with the name Franziska re-name herself "Ska" instead of "Franzi", or re-name her at all ?

"Franzi" would probably sound too cute. "Ska" is much cooler.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

[Middle-aged Europe]

European election poll for Germany (Emnid, 01/26)

CDU/CSU 42%
SPD 26%
Greens 10%
Left 8%
AfD 7%
FDP 3%

I suppose the only purpose of the poll is to push the AfD, since this poll was commissioned by BILD.

And it seems the FDP is struggling to re-enter the European Parliament even with the lowered threshold in effect. They should pray that the Consitutional Court strikes the 3% clause down as well in the coming weeks.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Elections on different administrative levels may have their own dynamics.

Those were state-level European election polls.

[Middle-aged Europe]

If you look for an international comparison, Mitt Romney is probably the character Henkel is coming most closely to.

Why not Ross Perot?

[Middle-aged Europe]

The voting was (exclusively) via mobile phone, so many people I know were very reluctant to take part.

Well, what you get exlusively via mobile phone is your password for the voting website. So the process is just designed in a too complicated manner. Besides, almost nobody knows who these candidates are. Even the two Germans candidates in the primary are virtually unknown among German voters. So you have the give the Greens your phone number in order to vote for people you don't know and don't care about.

At least the upcoming nomination of the German candidate list could prove interesting. If Ska Keller wins the primary, it's possible that she tries to run against Rebecca Harms for list position no. 1. In addition, Green MEP Sven Giegold has announced his intention to run against European Green party chairman Reinhard Bütikofer for list position no. 2 if Rebecca Harms manages to get nominated for spot no. 1.

Anyway, you still have 1 hour and 15 minutes to cast your vote in the Green primary.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Bütikofer didn't run in the primary though.

[Middle-aged Europe]

José Bové and Ska Keller win Green primary.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Green primary results

Ska Keller 11,791
José Bové 11,726
Rebecca Harms 8,170
Monica Frassoni 5,851

Turnout: 22,676


It was an online primary where everybody from the age of 16 was allowed to vote. Obviously the 32-year-old candidate wins this.

Anyway, let's see what ramifications this has for the nomination of the German candidate list next week with regards to a Keller vs. Harms rematch.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Is this the result for Germany only, or for the whole EU ?

22.676 seems extremely low for Germany, not to mention the EU ...

The whole EU. And yes, it is low.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/geringe-beteiligung-bei-gruenen-urwahl-zu-europa-spitzenkandidatur-a-945792.html

[Middle-aged Europe]

I'm  a Green party member in the UK and I didn't have a clue about this. (I still don't, what's going on?)

Ska Keller and José Bové are your leading candidates for the European parliament elections.

http://europeangreens.eu/news/press-release-greens-select-leading-candidates

[Middle-aged Europe]

Green primary winner Ska Keller has officially announced her candidacy for position no. 1 on the German Green list thus challenging European parliamentary group leader Rebecca Harms.

And Keller not being nominated would automatically trigger Sven Giegold's challenge against European party chairman Reinhard Bütikofer on position no. 1

Yay, anarchy!

[Middle-aged Europe]

I'm  a Green party member in the UK and I didn't have a clue about this. (I still don't, what's going on?)

Ska Keller and José Bové are your leading candidates for the European parliament elections.

http://europeangreens.eu/news/press-release-greens-select-leading-candidates

in what way, for a pan-european campaign that the british greens have nothing to do with?

I thought Daniel Cohn Bendit was the supreme leader of the Euro-Verts

Daniel Cohn-Bendit is one of the two co-leaders of the European Parliament group of the Greens, along with Rebecca Harms. But Cohn-Bendit plans to retire after this election anyway.


On January 18, one of the Green primary debates with the four candidates was held in London:

http://london.greenparty.org.uk/news/2013/11/10/europe-wide-green-primary-launches,-with-london-greens-to-host-hustings/

And back in November, Ska Keller was endorsed by the Green Party of England and Wales and José Bové was endorsed by the Scottish Green Party:

http://europeangreens.eu/news/bov%C3%A9-frassoni-harms-and-keller-contend-green-primary


So I gather attempts by your Green Party to mobilize members were pretty much non-existent? At least the German Greens tried to e-mail all their members via newsletters and mailing lists. But maybe nobody read that either.

[Middle-aged Europe]

European elections poll for Germany (Infratest dimap, 02/06)

CDU/CSU 38%
SPD 29%
Greens 10%
Left 8%
AfD 6%
FDP 4%

FDP surge!!

[Middle-aged Europe]

Seems like CDU looses both to AfD and FDP.

Possibly also to the SPD, since the same poll showed that foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has now relieved Angela Merkel as the most popular politician in Germany.

And I don't think that anyone loses anything to the FDP right now. In the 2013 Bundestag election, the AfD had received the most of their votes from former FDP and Left Party voters... maybe that's also the case here. The 11% the FDP had received in the 2009 EU elections have to go somewhere at least.

Has AfD stated what EP-group they will join? ECR or EFD?!

Not to my knowledge.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Surely 'inciting' the voters is one of the things the AfD needs to do better.

On the subject of the AfD, what, actually, are they for. I mean, from reading the wikipedia page (yes, sadly, up until recently wikipedia was my main source on the politics of foreign countries) they seem vaguely eurosceptic... And yet, even on that, they seem a bit fuzzy.

Protest party for:
- conservatives who are disappointed by the CDU and/or FDP
- people who are disaffected by the European Union
- people who are against the traditional establishment and disaffected by the political process in general

In the 2013 Bundestag election, they won most of their votes from the FDP (430.000), the Left Party (340.000), the CDU/CSU (290.000), and non-voters (210.000). Only marginal wins from SPD and Greens.

Broadly speaking, they're against giving German money to other EU countries over the Euro crisis and think that the CDU has become too centrist. Some German media went so far to describe it as "the German Tea Party".

[Middle-aged Europe]

European election poll for Germany (INSA, 02/14)

CDU/CSU 39%
SPD 25%
Greens 10%
Left 10%
AfD 8%
FDP 3%

[Middle-aged Europe]

BREAKING: German Constitutional Court rules against 3% threshold.

Which means there will be no threshold at all for winning seats in Germany in this election. Good news for FDP, Pirates, NPD, Free Voters, and possibly the Animal Protection Party.

[Middle-aged Europe]

You'll effectively need about 0.5% of the votes to win a seat in Germany now.

Paties who won 0.5% or more in the last Bundestag election:
CDU
SPD
Left
Greens
CSU
FDP
AfD
Pirates
NPD
Free Voters

In addition, the following parties won 0.5% or more in the last European election:
Republicans
Animal Protection Party
Family Party
Pensioners' Party
Ecological Democratic Party


Hypothetical result in seats of the 2009 European election without any threshold (in brackets the difference to the actual result):

CDU 32 (-2)
SPD 21 (-2)
Greens 12 (-2)
FDP 11 (-1)
Left 8 (+-0)
CSU 7 (-1)
Free Voters 2 (+2)
Republicans 1 (+1)
Animal Protection Party 1 (+1)
Family Party 1 (+1)
Pirate Party 1 (+1)
Pensioners' Party 1 (+1)
Ecological Democratic Party 1 (+1)

[Middle-aged Europe]

The leader of the satirical party "THE PARTY" has announced that if they win a seat in the European Parliament their deputies are gonna resign on a monthly basis. They have nominated a list with 60 candidates and if they all resign after a month everybody gets his or her turn. Also, they want to campaign on the promise of buildung a wall around Switzerland.

So far, THE PARTY has never managed to cross 0.5% in a national elections, although they did in the last state elections in Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, and Saarland.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Positive side of the ruling: Average people could enter the Parliament who are not and never have been a member of the political elite. That could stir things up a bit.

Negative side of the ruling: Those people could be morons. Plus, it's all but guarenteed that the NPD is gonna send representatives to Strasbourg now. Not sure whether this is gonna lead to brawls with Polish right-wing MPs when they start to demand that Danzig is and will be a German city.