2009 State and Federal elections in Germany

[minionofmidas]

http://www.frankfurt.de/sixcms/media.php/678/2002_3_4_Bundestagswahl2002.pdf

Check the graphic at the top of page 225, or rather the CDU and Green graphs for the middle age brackets... (and keep in mind what I said about being more pronounced in urban areas).

[Tender Branson]

Ah, now I´ve found it (for 2002 at least):

Overall results (2002): CDU 38.5%, SPD 38.5%

Voters 60+: CDU 46.0%, SPD 38.5% (+7.5, no diff.)
Voters 45-60: CDU 37.4%, SPD 38.8% (-1.1, +0.3)
Voters 35-45: CDU 33.5%, SPD 39.3% (-5.0, +0.8 )

Overall results (2005): CDU 35.2%, SPD 34.2%

Voters 60+: CDU 43.3%, SPD 34.1% (+8.1, -0.1)
Voters 45-60: CDU 33.1%, SPD 34.4% (-2.1, +0.2)
Voters 35-45: CDU 31.1%, SPD 34.1% (-4.1, -0.1)

http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/DE/Content/Publikationen/Querschnittsveroeffentlichungen/WirtschaftStatistik/Wahlen/Waehlerverhalten,property=file.pdf

So, the CDU did better with 60+ voters between 2002 and 2005, worse with 45-60 and better again with 35-45 olds ...

[Tender Branson]

Steinmeier promises full employment within 11 years

While the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) takes a summer break before the autumn election campaign, chancellor candidate for the Social Democrats (SPD), Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has unveiled a plan to create full employment in the next 11 years.

The ambitious idea centres around turning Germany into what Steinmeier called the "Silicon Valley of environmentally-sensitive industrial production," according to Der Spiegel magazine at the weekend.

“We show how with clever policies Germany can create a total of 4 million jobs in the next decade,” he said.

Steinmeier’s 67-page "Plan for Germany" sets out how half of these jobs which will be generated by promoting greener industries, as well as energy and raw material saving.

A further million new jobs could be created in the health service, he said, in particular in the care professions – for the chronically sick and the old.

Half a million jobs should be created in what Steinmeier called the "creative industries" and a further half a million in other service industries and trade.

On top of this, Steinmeier promised to found an ‘alliance for mid-sized businesses’ which will bring business, unions and banks around one table in order to shore up the conditions necessary for job creation and fight the effects of the credit crunch. This would also include a state credit mediator which would negotiate between banks and companies needing money.

Steinmeier will launch his plan on Monday evening in a speech in Berlin. The election which will decide whether he manages to oust Chancellor Angela Merkel from her post will be held on September 27.

http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20090801-20965.html

Well, 4 Mio. jobs seems to be a bit high, but not impossible.

In early 1997, Germany had 36.9 Mio. employed, in early 2009 it was 40.2 Mio.

Considering that the job market is lagging behind, Germany might shed about 1 Mio. jobs until recovery gets back on track in lets say 2012.

And from 2012 to 2020 it's not impossible to create again 2-3 Mio. or so jobs.

The question is only: What kind of jobs ? Good-paying full time jobs or many part time jobs ?

Full employment though by 2020 is bullsh*t !

[Tender Branson]

Will they Schreiber-case still have any impact on the elections next month ?

Karlheinz Schreiber: the man with the suitcase full of cash

He has brought shame to politicians on both sides of the Atlantic and now German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber is back in Germany to face charges of tax-evasion, fraud and corruption.

Schreiber is a key figure in the slush-fund scandal that disgraced former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). But in his adopted home of Canada, he also brought former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney into ill repute. Now, after a decade-long legal battle, he has been extradited to Germany.

In Canada, Schreiber lived life well, enjoying residences in the business capital Toronto and the federal capital Ottawa. He developed a reputation as a man who loved hobnobbing with power brokers in both Canada and Germany.

But like the life he left behind in Germany, Schreiber flew out of Canada on Sunday under a cloud of suspicion and scandal. On July 28, the Oliphant commission held its final day of hearings in which Schreiber testified that he gave Mulroney €196,000 (CAD$300,000) to lobby on behalf of Thyssen Industries to the Canadian government to build an armoured vehicle plant while the Progressive Conservative leader was still in power. Mulroney claims the funds he received, €147,00 ($225,000 CAD) changed hands shortly after he left office in 1993.

As part of the agreement to get Schreiber to testify, Canadian officials said the weapons-lobbyist turned pasta dealer could stay in the country he’s been a citizen of since 1982 until the end of the hearings. At the weekend, a last-ditch effort hearing to halt the extradition was held and denied. He was met by German police as he landed in Munich on Monday morning.

Arrested in 1999 by the Canadian authorities, the 75-year-old will now face prosecution for charges related to a slush-fund scandal that rocked Kohl's conservatives in 1999.

After enjoying successful sales careers in his hometown of Hohegeiß im Harz and Braunschweig, Schreiber moved on to Munich, where he met his business mentor Franz Josef Strauß, who went on to become leader of the Christian Social Democrats, Bavarian sister-party to the CDU.

Shortly after that meeting, Schreiber's career in weapons sales took off. He managed contracts for helicopters, Airbus planes and armoured personnel carriers for Germany and other countries. He mediated ties from steel giant Thyssen and the Bavarian state government and the federal intelligence services based in the Munich suburb of Pullach, among other contracts.

However, between his legitimate dealings, an investigation based in Augsburg into the CDU’s political finances during the 1990s put the heat on Schreiber. Under investigation for allegedly exchanging a briefcase containing €511,000 (1 million German Marks) with former CDU treasurer Walter Leisler Kiep in a Swiss parking lot in August 1991, Schreiber emptied all of his German bank accounts and used his Canadian passport to settle permanently in Toronto in 1996.

But his past caught up to him in 1999, when Kiep was arrested in Germany. The Canadian authorities arrested Schreiber on a German warrant. Tracing Schrieber’s briefcase of money into the CDU's party coffers, Kiep as well as two Thyssen managers and Ludwig-Holger Pfals, a former liaison to the defense ministry were all found guilty of corruption.

Another €51,000 (DM100,000) donation made by Schreiber to the CDU also forced the then party leader Woflgang Schäuble to resign in 2000, paving the way for current Chancellor Angela Merkel to take the helm of Germany's conservatives by disavowing the shady dealings of the Kohl era.

The Augsburg investigation uncovered millions in illegal donations squirreled away in slush funds under Kohl’s leadership in the 1990s. Kohl initially denied knowledge of the accounts, putting the scheme entirely on Kiep. However, in a teary television appearance weeks after Kiep’s arrest, Kohl admitted he knew about the illegal donations. But he stubbornly refused to name the donors, claming their privacy was protected by his word of honour.

After landing in Munich on Monday, Schreiber was whisked away to prison in nearby Augsburg.

Whether his arrival in Germany will now produce any new revelations about the CDU's misdeeds under Kohl is unclear, but he claims he has become an unwilling participant in the upcoming German election. The vote takes place on September 27. Schreiber's trial date is still pending.

If found guilty on all charges, Schreiber faces 15 years in jail.

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20090803-21001.html

[minionofmidas]

Re Steinmeier: Product Piracy. That's the Green plan with an unreasonable higher assumption for no. of jobs created put in. Smacks of desperation, frankly.

Re Schreiber: Sadly no. The trial won't start until after the election.

[Tender Branson]

The SPD takes another dive in the latest Forsa poll:

CDU: 37%
SPD: 20%
FDP: 14%
Greens: 13%
Left: 11%
Others: 5%

[Tender Branson]

Seat projection (without Überhangmandate):

CDU/CSU: 233
SPD: 126
FDP: 88
Greens: 82
Left: 69

[Hash]

Wow!

[Tender Branson]

The new Emnid poll shows a somewhat "tighter" race:

CDU/CSU: 35%
SPD: 23%
FDP: 15%
Greens: 12%
Left: 11%
Others: 4%

[Tender Branson]

New constituency polls for Hamburg for the newspaper "Welt":

Hamburg-Eimsbüttel:

Danial Ilkhanipour (SPD): 37% (2005: 45% for Niels Annen)
Rüdiger Kruse (CDU): 36% (2005: 34%)
Krista Sager (Greens): 13%

Hamburg-Nord:

Dirk Fischer (CDU): 40% (2005: 39%)
Christian Carstensen (SPD): 38% (2005: 43% for Carstensen)

Hamburg-Wandsbek:

Ingo Egloff (SPD): 44% (2005: 50% for Ortwin Runde (SPD))
Jürgen Klimke (CDU): 37% (2005: 36%)

The SPD-candidates (Olaf Scholz, Johannes Kahrs, Hans-Ulrich Klose) of the other 3 Hamburg districts (Altona, Mitte, Harburg) are safe according to the polls by election.de

http://www.welt.de/die-welt/vermischtes/hamburg/article4290209/SPD-muss-in-drei-Wahlkreisen-um-Direktmandat-zittern.html

Looks like a uniform 6-10% swing to the CDU ...

[Tender Branson]

www.election.de now estimates the following:



213 direct seats for CDU/CSU (127 of them are safe)
81 direct seats for SPD (15 of them are safe)

97 seats are currently toss-ups
60 seats are slightly leaning in one party's direction

Will be interesting if the districts of Freiburg and Leipzig-South go to the CDU as well ...

There's also the possibility that the states of Rheinland-Pfalz, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are becoming SPD-free in the first vote ...

[Хahar 🤔]

The one Green seat is in West Berlin, isn't it?

[Hans-im-Glück]

The one Green seat is in West Berlin, isn't it?

Yes, this is the constituency Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and he is the winner of this mandate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Christian_Str%C3%B6bele

[MaxQue]

The one Green seat is in West Berlin, isn't it?

Yes, this is the constituency Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and he is the winner of this mandate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Christian_Str%C3%B6bele

The seat is in East and West Berlin at the same time?

[Hans-im-Glück]

The one Green seat is in West Berlin, isn't it?

Yes, this is the constituency Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and he is the winner of this mandate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Christian_Str%C3%B6bele

The seat is in East and West Berlin at the same time?

Yes. This district was buid 2002 with Kreuzberg (West Berlin) and Friedrichshain (East Berlin). Kreuzberg is the center of the Turkish comunity in Berlin.

[minionofmidas]

Yes. The east-west border is crossed by two constituencies (Mitte being the other one). It is also crossed by borough boundaries.
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg makes some sense, nonetheless, as the two areas have quite a bit in common (despite their being exactly one bridge across the Spree linking them. ) but the other doesn't make much sense.
Besides, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg worked out as the perfect pro-Green gerrymander without being intended as one.

[Хahar 🤔]

What were the results there in 2005?

[Hash]

What makes that seat so Green?

Not the Turkish community?

[Hans-im-Glück]

What were the results there in 2005?

The 2005 result for Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg

First vote (for the direct candidate):

SPD      20,7
CDU      11,3
Green   43,3
FDP         2,7
Left       18,0
Others     4,0

Second vote (for the party list):

SPD       37,3
CDU       11,0
Green    21,8
FDP          4,6
Left        20,8
Others      4,5

[Hans-im-Glück]

What makes that seat so Green?

Not the Turkish community?

This is a center of the left-alternative people too. This are people witch are very Pro-foreigners. Maybe not the majority, but extreme many of the "Turkish-German" vote Green, because they make politics for them. The Greens are 100% the friendliest party to foreigners.

[Tender Branson]

Talking of Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg ...

The CDU-candidate in this district, Vera Lengsfeld, is advertising with this:



(below it says: "We have more to offer.")



The CDU headquarters are not amused with this campaign ...

But considering the CDU candidate got only 11% in 2005 she's heading for failure anyway.

[minionofmidas]

The former Vera Wollenberger? Lol. Blast from the past. That woman has more than a few screws loose, as every last Green had noticed ca. 95 or so and every last Thuringian Christian Democrat had noticed ca. 2004.

The postwar histories of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain - and the Prenzlauer Berg - would be pushing the post limit, so I suggest you use wikipedia. (Though I haven't checked if they're good.)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Or you could do three seperate posts

[minionofmidas]

Or you could do three seperate posts

Fuck you.

(You know I love you. )

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Or you could do three seperate posts

Fuck you.

(You know I love you. )