German Elections & Politics

[Tender Branson]

In Saxony, if FDP falls below 5%, will CDU go for a CDU-AfD alliance or will we have the CDU-SPD just like everywhere else.

No CDU-AfD coalition:

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"I don't think that this is a coalition partner for us, which is able to do responsible government work for this state and its people." - Governor Tillich (CDU)

...

The most likely options are CDU-SPD or CDU-Greens (if they have enough seats).

[jaichind]

In Saxony, if FDP falls below 5%, will CDU go for a CDU-AfD alliance or will we have the CDU-SPD just like everywhere else.

I assume CDU-SPD. AfD probably prefers to be outside for now.

The wiki page for this election has a summary of potential coalitions, in slightly broken English.

Make sense.  My understanding is that local CDU has not ruled it out yet.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Breaking: Three-term Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit intends to resign on December 11.

Thank god, I say. The SPD is probably pretty relieved too to get rid of Berlin's most unpopular politician and Germany's most unpopular state premier.

The most likely successor for Wowereit at this point seems to be SPD state chairman Jan Stöß (who would in fact be Berlin's second openly gay mayor ).

[Zanas]

Breaking: Three-term Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit intends to resign on December 11.

Thank god, I say. The SPD is probably pretty relieved too to get rid of Berlin's most unpopular politician and Germany's most unpopular state premier.

Will Berlin stop bieng sexy then ? What's for sure is that it's not gonna stop being "arm"...

[mountvernon]

I've noticed that, ever since the Wall came down, the CDU has been unusually strong in Saxony and the SPD in Brandenburg.  Is that solely because of the early popularity of Kurt Biedenkopf and Manfred Stolpe, respectively?  I know that ideological voting is weak in the former DDR.

[Yeahsayyeah]

This popularity also - by electoral success - influenced - where the moderate/ centrist politicians went to (oversimplificiation garanteed).

[mountvernon]

So a bit of a path dependence effect?  Early success by those parties encouraged ambitious politicians to sign up with them. 

Are there any significant demographic differences between Saxony and Brandenburg? I know Saxony has become the most prosperous new Land, but that occurred after the CDU rose to power, not before.  Brandenburg has some gritty industrial towns near the Polish border (Left strongholds, I gather) but also some prosperous suburbs of Berlin.

[Middle-aged Europe]

SPIEGEL ONLINE has a Best of Wowereit gallery of which I'll post a Best Of. Sums up his mayorship pretty well...

[Yeahsayyeah]

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Path dependency is clearly a big factor. Another may be, that the CDU in Saxony has been successfully exploiting a strong regional identity that influences political culture, that is not so much the case in the other East German Länder. And of course, the big brain drain of the nineties and processes of deurbanisation did shape the political landscape, too. But of course, this also is true for the other states.
Actually, the North-South-Gradient of voting CDU/(DSU) vs. SPD/PDS and now Linke was already visible in the 1990 Volkskammer election, where there was no Biedenkopf, of course. One basic thing, often forgotten, is, that the south of the GDR (Saxony, Thuringia, district of Halle) has been industrialised and prosperous before 1945 and the north not so much, despite Berlin, Magdeburg and some industry here and there in Brandenburg. Industrial policy of the GDR has always been to decrease those differences, so the north became more industrial (so also integrating the Neusiedler/expatriates into the system), as became agriculture as a whole, while the south saw more lack of investment and forms of decay (well, a hard word). So political messages to rebuild a former glory of economic strength and a the bürgerliche Tradition were more appealing there, obviously.

Demographically it is always difficult to measure, where those differences of industrialisation come from. In general one would think, that Saxony's three big cities that nowadays make up one third of the population should shift it more to the left, but Dresden has it's Residenzstadt tradition, that makes it more conservative (they now after the May muncipal election have a left majority for the first time in their assembly after 1990), Leipzig has its tradition as the city of the Bürgertum, merchants, culture etc. Of course, it was also a highly industrialised town, but the working class here was highly disillusioned by what the GDR had made of their town and what capitalism and democracy did to it and their lives, after, which also seems to be the case in Chemnitz.

If you look at the smaller towns, one can say that the "typical industrial town" in Saxony has been older (with a medieval/early modern core) and smaller than in Brandenburg. Where this is not the case, like in Riesa and Gröditz, you got relatively strong results for the left parties.

[Franzl]

Some "grand" coalition that would be in Sachsen.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Some "grand" coalition that would be in Sachsen.

The SPD will probably have at least more grandezza than their 9,8 percent of 2004. Some predictions and thoughts of one who is fleeing from Saxony for personal economic reasons. ;-)

CDU: 38% [40,2% in 2009]

The CDU will clearly lose There is some CDU fatigue going on and the Merkel style campaign of promoting prime minister Stanislaw Tillich, who is quite popular for not publicly bothering with things like politics or holding an opinion, does not seem to work too good for them. They have now been ruling the state for 24 years and are increasingly acting like they would own it. Problems are increasing steadily, too. There is a lack of investment into kindergardens, schools, university, infrastructure despite building new big roads that nobody needs. Now, that the election is near they are doing action programs to look as they could fill all the holes, they neglected over the past five years. That does not seem to convincing. Governing together with the most incompetent and insolent FDP state party (which means something probably does not help, too.
The other part of their strategy were - also merkelesque - attempts of asymmetrical demobilisation, also by playing dirty tricks like holding the election at the end of the summer vacation, so that families with children are in holiday during the campaign (old people will vote CDU anyway) and also some gerrymandering to win all constituencies (overhang seats are not fully compensated in the Saxonian electoral law). But the key part of merkelesque strategy - doing a personal feel-good campaign without proclaiming any content of policies and strategies how to deal with the problems of the state does not seem to work in their favour as the typcial conservative rural Saxon voters will be inclined to vote against those "evil foreigners and Brussels that are overwhelming our country" and so for AfD and NPD and some will probably also want to go for the populist FDP as black-yellow still is possible, but not probable, if the FDP is crossing the threshold.

Die Linke: 21% [20,6%]

The Left party is doing a quite decent campaign and a quite decent top candidate in Rico Gebhardt, but who is literally unknown - so they go more with content. Though their dialectical approach of linking things that are already achieved to things they want to do is probably a little bit too intellectual for the average voter. But on the other hand, people and journalists ask, what they mean by that, so it's a starter for Wahlkampf conversation. Examples: "Pisa-Lob und weniger Schulabbrecher" (Praise by the PISA study and less school dropouts), "Sächsisch und weltoffen" ("Saxon and cosmopolitan") with the picture of the famous Yenidze tobacco factory in Dresden, also called the "tobacco mosque" for obvious reasons, or "Industrietradition und Energiewende" (Energiewende is now the polticial German term for "getting out of fossil fuels and building up renewables"). I think they would be ready to govern, but as long as SPD and Greens are bitching around against them, this will not happen.

SPD: 12% [10,4%]
The SPD is doing a rightful battle matériel, but they really do a campaign that is tailored towards their top candidate Martin Dulig, who has a real awkward personality and never did say something that has content, despite "The Left party is evil and we are the serious and competent people's party (mind the German obsession of being a "Volkspartei") on the left. So all they have are sh**tty face posters of Dulig and attention-whoring because nobody notices them for all attention is concentrating on the true antagonist of Gebhardt and Tillich, because everybody knows the most probable outcome is a CDU/SPD-coalition like 2004-2009, and the only difference is that both partners will have less of a profile concerning the contents and worse staff, this time. Some badmouths already call the SPD campaign "the most expensive twelve percent ever"

AfD: 7,5 %
NPD: 4 % [5,6%]

The AfD, especially in Saxony, is a party of frustrated right-wing old white middle class men, despite their top candidate Frauke Petry, who is a quite energetic not-so-old woman and entrepreneur who is trying to give them a reasonable voice. Their platform and campaign is a strange mix of law and order right wing populism (spotted by some folklore like a quota of music sung in German in the radio airtime and referenda concerning the building of minarets (there isn't even one, now), economic liberalism, also exploiting ostalgia and 1989 the same time ("Dafür sind wir 1989 nicht auf die Straße gegangen"/ We didn't go out on the streets in 1989 for that"). Their probable voters mostly seem to be disappointed former CDU and FDP voters, added by some NPD and Linke protest voters, but not to a high extent.

As the pollsters are now seeing NPD up to five percent, there seems now to be a real core of NPD voters in Saxony. I would've expected that the AfD is gaining more from them than from CDU, but polls suggest this is not the case. Unless this is not just the pollsters calculating a "shy right winger effect" that already has ceased to exist, this would be the real concerning story of this election, because one would think that the less disgusting AfD would be an alternative for mere protest voters.

Greens: 7% [6,4%]
The Greens are doing a campaign stressing their core values and are now having a typcial Green "Doppelspitze" (two official top candidates) for the first time, as they wanted to contain Antje Hermenau who comes from the right wing of the party, has been an open proponent of a black-green coalition (not so much for the last year) and despises the Left party. Despite being quite isolated politically inside the party, noone really tries to oust her, because she is claimed to have some appeal to moderate voters (weither this is good, if it is even true, is a very debateable issue, because she also scares people that are more left wing). Volkmar Zschocke is a well-respected long-term muncipial politician from Chemnitz, but he seems to be very unknown outside his town, so the Doppelspitze did probably not achieve its main goal. They will get their core voters out, win some in rural areas, where they had at some places decent results in the 2014 municipial elections, and be more stagnant at the big cities (that have more voters, though, by a massive inmigration over the last ten years from the rural parts and other states, eastern and western alike. So their small wins, if any, should be attributed to demographic change.

FDP: 4 % [10%]
FDP is campaigning mainly for loan votes, the exact opposite of their policies while in government (more policemen, better public transport) and is hoping for the votes of cars ("Your car would vote for us" REALLY is a campaign poster slogan"). Of course, claiming the opposite of their actual policies has a tradition there. In 2004 at the height of the protest wave against the job-market reform ("Hartz laws") they really placarded "Herz statt Hartz". At least they are not recylcling the CDU slogan from the seventies "Freiheit statt Sozialismus"/"Freedom instead of socialism", which they actually wanted to do.

Others: 6,5% [6,8%]

I am not doing predictions for the different splinter groups

Also run:
Partei Mensch Umwelt Tierschutz/ Party Human, Environment, Animal Protection [2,1%]
Wants to loose its single-issue animal protection image and is campaigning on an environmentalist, anti-lobbyism (quite ironic) platform. Comes more from a "christian humanist" background than the Greens and seems to be more socially conservative, but I don't know if many of their voters notice their platform, anyway.

Pirate Party [1,9%]
The fad is over.

Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (BüSo)/ Civil Rights Movement Solidarity [0,2%]
We all know Lyndon LaRouche is the only person who can save the world by building a giant magnetic rail to Moscow and Peking and by this, prevent the third world war.

Deutsche Soziale Union (DSU)/ German Social Union [0,2%]
Yes, this remnant of the right wing of the GDR civil rights movement, that was first pampered and then dropped by the CSU with the intelligent people moving forward to the CDU, is still around.

Bürgerbewegung pro Deutschland [0,2%]
The Saxonian branch of this xenophobic scum is mostly the former "Saxonian People's Party" of a former NPD Landtag member, that surprisingly found out after years of research and experience, that the NPD is very right wing.

Free Voters [1,4% as Freie Sachsen]
Will geht their fair share in some rural areas.

Die PARTEI
Martin Sonneborn's satiricial project is also running and will get their fair share in some urban areas.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Front-runners for Wowereit's succession as Berlin mayor are state party chairman Jan Stöß and state parliament caucus leader Raed Saleh.

Both are considered members of the SPD's left wing, even though Saleh seems to be Wowereit's preferred choice to succeed him. Stöß had defeated Wowereit's man Michael Müller during the last SPD chairmanship election. Stöß would be Berlin's second gay mayor and Saleh would be Berlin's first mayor of Arab descent.

Since there are some doubts concerning the competence/experience of both front-runners, the federal SPD apparently also tried to recruit President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz for the job. But he already turned them down.

[Middle-aged Europe]

FDP: Foreign media mean, that Lindner's strategy is to ignore Berlin and focus on NRW, so that he achieves a strong result there in spring 2017, boosting the federal FDP in autumn.

NRW is in mid-2017. That's an eternity for the FDP. Nobody knows in what state the party will be by then and whether participating in the NRW election would serve any purpose anymore tbh.

I think the FDP's short term strategy right now is to ignore Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg in August/September (because they don't have a chance there anyway), and try to get past 5% in Hamburg next February. At this point the FDP tries to find state parliaments were it has a realistic chance of getting into, and doesn't really put its mind on the Bundestag.

[Tender Branson]

My prediction for the Saxony state election on Sunday:

40.4% CDU
19.2% Left
13.9% SPD
  7.6% AfD
  6.1% Greens
  4.8% NPD
  3.3% FDP
  1.2% Pirates
  1.1% TSP
  1.0% The Party
  0.8% FW
  0.6% Others

Turnout: 58.4%

[Tender Branson]

Merkel rules out any coalition with the AfD on the federal and state level:

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http://www.mdr.de/sachsen/wahlen-politik/landtagswahl/vorwahlsplitter-landtagswahl-sachsen100.html#anchor1

Merkel says the AfD has a "backwards picture of society".

Which might be true.

Didn't the Saxony-AfD leader just recently call for a referendum on abortion ?

[Hifly]

Merkel rules out any coalition with the AfD on the federal and state level:

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http://www.mdr.de/sachsen/wahlen-politik/landtagswahl/vorwahlsplitter-landtagswahl-sachsen100.html#anchor1

Merkel says the AfD has a "backwards picture of society".

Which might be true.

Didn't the Saxony-AfD leader just recently call for a referendum on abortion ?

Well, they're possibly the most highly educated party.

[Zanas]

Merkel rules out any coalition with the AfD on the federal and state level:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.mdr.de/sachsen/wahlen-politik/landtagswahl/vorwahlsplitter-landtagswahl-sachsen100.html#anchor1

Merkel says the AfD has a "backwards picture of society".

Which might be true.

Didn't the Saxony-AfD leader just recently call for a referendum on abortion ?

Well, they're possibly the most highly educated party.

Do you mean by membership or by electorate ?

[Middle-aged Europe]

The fight over Klaus Wowereit's succession as Berlin mayor has now become a three-way race. Michael Müller, former SPD state chairman and current minister for urban development, joins Jan Stöß and Raed Saleh as candidate.

The members of the Berlin SPD are going to vote on who will succeed Wowereit in a primary-like election this fall.

[Tender Branson]

Final Saxony state election poll out from FGW for ZDF:

[Middle-aged Europe]

A state which elects the NPD to the state parliament for a third time in a row - and Saxony would be the first German state where this happens - must be pretty horrible.

[Zanas]

Linke and SPD are gonna be ranked the other way around, I guarantee it.

[Tender Branson]

Linke and SPD are gonna be ranked the other way around, I guarantee it.

Why do you think the SPD can improve by 2% and the Left lose 2% compared with the last polls ?

German pre-election polls are generally close to the actual result.

[Zanas]

Experience has taught me that when you have a social-liberal party and a vaguely more leftist party competing somewhat closely for a rank, the social-liberal party nearly always end up ahead of the vaguely more leftist party. Not always, I grant you, but nearly always.

[Tender Branson]

The polls in Saxony are now open. They will close at 6pm local time with first exit polls.

2009 state election result (Final 2014 polls):

40.2% CDU (39-42%)
20.6% Left (18-20%)
10.4% SPD (13-15%)
10.0% FDP (3-4%)
  6.4% Greens (5-7%)
  5.6% NPD (4-5%)
  2.1% Animal Protection Party
  1.9% Pirates
  2.8% Others

  0.0% AfD (6-7%)

Turnout: 52.2%

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[Tender Branson]

My final prediction for the Saxony state election today:

40.5% CDU
18.8% Left
14.8% SPD
  7.4% AfD
  5.5% Greens
  4.7% NPD
  3.0% FDP
  1.6% TSP
  1.2% FW
  1.2% Pirates
  0.8% The Party
  0.5% Others

Turnout: 58.4%