German Elections & Politics

[Filuwaúrdjan]

SPD under-performing exit polls while AfD over-performing exit polls. 

By pretty tiny amounts.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Some very interesting patterns, as always.

[DC Al Fine]

Any word on the makeup of the "Other" result?

[Bumaye]

The political landscape of Berlin has changed quite a bit. (Zweitstimmen [Party votes])

I'm not yet allowed to post pictures so if someone wants: imgur. com/dDZkUV8. png

With 3 of 2.432 places yet to count it's save to say that Die PARTEI has for the first time reached the 2 percent mark and is the strongest party not in the parliament.

With how the evening went just two coalitions are possible (no one is going with the AfD), SPD-Left-Green or SPD-CDU-Green. The polls show that the fast majority prefer option number one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Looking back at past results, it would appear that this is the first time that the PDS/Left has been defeated in north Marzahn. It was one of the few areas of the city where they led in 1990. Also the first time since 1990 that they've been beaten in north Hohenschönhausen and north Hellersdorf.

This is also the first time since 1979 that the SPD have won the constituency containing Gropiusstadt but that's basically a boundary change issue. CDU also lose in the Mariendorf seat (middle of Tempelhof borough) for the first time since then (or 1971: in 1979 there were two and they won one). Mayor Müller holds the seat immediately north so that's probably a factor.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Berlin is basically the only German state where it is possible for SPD, CDU, Greens, Left, and AfD each to come in as the strongest party in different electoral districts. The cultural divide between Marzahn-Hellersdorf and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg is probably about as big as the one between Russia and Canada.

The seat distribution in the new borough assembly of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (in the brackets the make-up of the borough executive):
Greens 20 (3)
Left 12 (1)
SPD 10 (1)
CDU 4
AfD 3
Pirates 2
Die PARTEI 2
FDP 2

The new borough assembly (and borough executive) of Marzahn-Hellersdorf:
Left 16 (2)
AfD 15 (1)
SPD 11 (1)
CDU 11 (1)
Greens 2

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[Tender Branson]

Cool.

In the end, my prediction was within 1% for every party and turnout, except for SPD and Left.

Looks like the Greens fell a bit during the evening and the AfD gained a bit.

[jaichind]

It seems the biggest bloc of AfD votes came from non-voters and Others (I assume most of it has to be NDP) from 2011.  It seems almost 2/3 of the non-voters of 2011 that came out to vote went to AfD.  I am surprised how little of the AfD came from Linke and Pirates of 2011.  I would have assumed that the anti-establishment vote that went for those two parties would have been attracted to AfD.  I am always amazed at how good the German exit polls are in terms of figuring out the vote flow.  I wonder how accurate it is? 

[palandio]

Which estimates are you referring to? Infratest dimap (ARD) or Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (ZDF)?
Here's a graphic based on data from Infratest dimap: http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2016-09/waehlerwanderung-berlin-wahl-afd-cdu-abgeordnetenhaus

According to this ca. 46k AfD votes came from Others. Many of these probably came from the NPD which went down from 31k to 9k. But it seems that the AfD was also able to drain voters from all over the "other" spectrum.

The ARD data on former non-voters that came out to vote are different from the data you are referring to. According to ARD 69k out of 251k voted AfD. The reason for this is that probably the ZDF is calculating with net flows and that the ZDF doesn't differentiate between non-voters, natural demographic changes and migrational changes. In my opinion the ARD approach makes more sense.

Regarding the voter flow from Linke and Pirates towards AfD: Keep in mind that the Linke in 2011 came out from an unpopular government and was electorally reduced to an absolute physiological minimum. There just weren't that many generic "protest voters" left that possibly could go to the AfD. The typical Pirates voter on the other hand was more of an inner-city alternative type, although the Pirates also got above-average results in some of the Eastern housing-estates.

As far as I can judge most vote flow estimates today come from a combination of exit polls ("Which party did you vote for last time?") and district-based (multinomial logit) regression analysis. They are resonably accurate, but I would estimate their MoE to lie in the region of ca. 10k when speaking about the more interesting numbers. A comparison of ZDF numbers and net flows calculated from ARD numbers might give a hint.

[jaichind]

I am referring to ARD

[palandio]

Ah, then I'm sorry for not having looked that up by myself.

It seems that Infratest dimap did a detailed analysis (see the ZEIT link) of vote flows and then ARD calculated net vote flows. In my view net vote flows can be quite problematic because they can pretend a much more static situation than what is really the case.

In fact Berlin shows a very flexible electorate. For example Berlin sees many people moving in and moving out, more than most other Bundesländer. Voters that moved in and voters that moved out voted quite differently (in 2016 and 2011 respectively), with in-moving voters voting to the left of the Berlin average.

But also when you take into account only voters that were registered to vote in Berlin in both 2011 and 2016, there is an interesting observation: The CDU lost heavily in 2016, but surprisingly ca. one third of its 2016 voters that had already been registered in 2011 had not voted CDU back then. And for other parties like SPD, Greens and Linke the numbers are even higher. On the other hand the Linke despite its overall gains lost ca. one third of its 2011 voters that were still registered in 2016.

So overall there are big voter exchanges, but the net flow picture tends to cancel out many of them.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, not terribly meaningful but pretty.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Gerwald Claus-Brunner, one of the Pirate Party MPs who failed getting re-elected to the state parliament on Sunday was found dead in his appartment yesterday.

It is presumed that it was a suicide since he apparently had hinted as much in his final parliamentary speech (which nobody was taking seriously enough).As of now, the identity of the second body which was found with Claus-Brunner is unkown though. So, possibly either a double suicide or a murder-suicide.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Why is CDU popular in that one area of the East?

[pilskonzept]

Why is CDU popular in that one area of the East?

It's partly the personal vote of Sen. Mario Czaja. But as Wikipedia claims, Biesdorf/Kaulsdorf/Mahlsdorf - i.e. Marzahn-Hellersdorf 4 and 5 - is also "Germany's largest area of detached and semi-detached houses." Mostly interwar. It doesn't feel posh, exactly, just bourgeois and...stable? by East Berlin standards. I have not seen any stats, but I suspect a lot of those houses are owned outright, and by the grandchildren of the people who built them.

[bmw1503]

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but what is the story behind Wahlkreis Mitte 2? It seems to have much higher Linke, and lower Green shares than the surrounding districts. This appears doubly so for adjacent Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 4.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but what is the story behind Wahlkreis Mitte 2? It seems to have much higher Linke, and lower Green shares than the surrounding districts. This appears doubly so for adjacent Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 4.

A really good answer to this was given ages ago, so let's just copy it here:

Not sure if social housing is the right word. Any new building project larger than two or three housing units in the DDR was by the state, basically. It's not that private homeownership or even private renting was illegal or anything, it's just that subsidized credit for it wasn't available at all, with inevitable results (read: decaying inner cities. That by the 80s and 90s often turned into artsy, if at least initially in a very downmarket way, enclaves).

The area were dealing with was bombed quite flat and thus has a lot of 50s and 60s government-built housing. Being centrally located and not of pisspoor quality, it's quite "desirable", in the low turnover sense of the word.

On the residents:

The same people who lived there twenty years ago when the world was still whole and the wall was still standing, of course.

[palandio]

I just saw that Sibboleth quoted Lewis' very good answer from seven years ago, so mine is maybe obsolete to some degree, but I'll post it nevertheless because it also includes something on the Green strongholds of East Berlin.

As far as I know, it has not been mentioned yet, but yes, there is a story behind Mitte 2 and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 4.

During WW2 large parts of the city center and adjacent quarters were destroyed. After the war during DDR times the areas around Alexanderplatz and Karl-Marx-Allee (then Stalinallee) were rebuilt with highrise Plattenbauten of a comparably high standard. Due to the function of East Berlin as Berlin's capital this area became one of the main residential areas for people employed at the overgrown central government and other institutions.
This type of quarter is demographically dominant in Mitte 2, Friedrichshain-Kr. 4 and parts of Lichtenberg.

In other parts of the Eastern city center the densely-built Wilhelminian housing survived the war. During DDR most of these quarters fell into decay, remained unrefurbished and suffered from population losses. Population drain culminated directly after the fall of the wall, when its residents were finally free to go where they wanted. But the abundance of cheap housing soon attracted a vibrant alternative scene (including house squatters). Within 25 years a rapid gentrification process took place and today the quarter of Prenzlauer Berg is known all over Germany (maybe unfairly) for its "Bionade-Bourgeoisie".
This type of quarter is demographically dominant in Pankow 6, Pankow 8, Friedrichshain-Kr. 5 and Mitte 1.

[rob in cal]

  I don't feel like going through each precinct level result, but I'm wondering what precinct is going to have the highest combined vote for left of center parties.  Looks like many precincts in Kreutzberg 1 saw SPD,Green,Linke votes alone hitting the low 80%, not counting votes for any other small left parties.

[Beezer]

New AfD record (among all pollsters) in the "Deutschlandtrend"

[reciprocity]

https://twitter.com/FraukePetry/status/780455841975631872

What is Frauke saying in this tweet? I know she mentions the Hartz reforms. Is it a negative? I assume so... Does that mean AfD is moving more leftist on economic matters?

[DavidB.]

https://twitter.com/FraukePetry/status/780455841975631872

What is Frauke saying in this tweet? I know she mentions the Hartz reforms. Is it a negative?

It's not about the reforms, it's about the benefits. She responds to a tweet by Die Welt ("all refugees should receive Hartz IV benefits") and tweets "Hartz IV [benefits] for all refugees? Wrong incentives are the problem, not the solution", implying that refugees already come to Germany because of the benefits.

[Beezer]

AfD moves into 2nd place in Brandenburg according to this Forsa poll:

SPD 30
AfD 20
CDU 17
Left 17
Greens 6
FDP 4

http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/landtage/brandenburg.htm