2009 State and Federal elections in Germany

[Hans-im-Glück]

Anyway, I'm extremely pleased the Köhler was re-elected. He's definitely one of my favorite politicians (if you can even call him one) at the present time.

I'm very surprised that Horst Köhler is a favorite politician of you (or for anyone;-) ) He looks and speaks like a "dyslexic in a tuxedo"

Her says nothing and when  he  say something you hear only platitudes. Okay, other candidates aren't very good, but they can speak (do you really think Horstl can this). Somehow or other, the Bundespräsident (federal president) is a position witch nobody really needs and everybody can make this job.

[minionofmidas]

And somehow, almost every President ends up being popular. This is nothing new. Herzog was worse.

[Hans-im-Glück]

And somehow, almost every President ends up being popular. This is nothing new. Herzog was worse.

That's true.  It's every time so that the people find the president good after 4 years. I find Herzog bad too, but i think he was 5% better. Maybe because I'm from Bavaria

[minionofmidas]

And somehow, almost every President ends up being popular. This is nothing new. Herzog was worse.

That's true.  It's every time so that the people find the president good after 4 years. I find Herzog bad too, but i think he was 5% better. Maybe because I'm from Bavaria

Maybe so.

[minionofmidas]

Berlin poll from Forsa, for the state elections (not up til the fall of 2011)

SPD 26
CDU 21
Greens 18
Left 16
FDP 11

Lol.

[Tender Branson]

2 new polls for the September Federal Elections:

Forsa for RTL and Stern Magazine

CDU/CSU: 36%
SPD: 21%
FDP: 15%
Greens: 12%
Left: 11%
Others: 5%

Merkel (CDU) vs. Steinmeier (SPD): 54-21

Infratest-dimap for ARD's Deutschlandtrend

CDU/CSU: 35% (West: 37%, East: 29%)
SPD: 23% (West: 23%, East: 21%)
FDP: 15% (West: 16%, East: 10%)
Greens: 13% (West: 14%, East: 9%)
Left: 10% (West: 6%, East: 25%)
Others: 4% (West: 4%, East: 6%)

Merkel (CDU) vs. Steinmeier (SPD): 57-27

Chancellor Merkel Job Approval Rating: 71% (+3)

[Tender Branson]

Another fact from the ARD poll:

Should the German military stay in Afghanistan ?

27% Yes
69% No

This is the highest support for withdrawal that has been measured so far.

[Tender Branson]

UNEXPECTED BOOST

Voting Quirk Could Favor Merkel in German Elections

"Overhang seats," an odd aspect of Germany's complex electoral system, might give Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives an unexpected boost in the upcoming elections. The Social Democrats are itching to change the system but fear doing so might bring down the current government.

If analysts are correct, a little quirk in Germany's election system known as "overhang seats" might translate into a big boost for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives in the Sept. 27 general election.

The unexpected advantage is a product of Germany's complex electoral system, which is based on proportional representation with elements of first-past-the-post, relative majority voting.

When a German goes to the polls in a general election, he or she gets two votes: one for his or her local constituency representative (the so-called "first vote") and one for the party he or she prefers (the "second vote"). A total of 299 members of parliament are chosen using each of the votes, which means that there are nominally 598 seats in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament.

The number of seats a particular party has in the Bundestag is made up of the constituency representatives (known as "direct mandates") it wins through the first vote, plus a certain number of extra seats based on its share of the total national second vote. These seats are filled from a state-level list of candidates that the party draws up and are allocated across Germany's 16 states based on how many votes the party got in each state.

For example, in the 2005 election, the Green Party won just over 8 percent of the national vote but only one constituency, in Berlin. It therefore had one "direct mandate" seat from the Berlin constituency, plus 50 seats allocated on the basis of its share of the second vote, making 51 Bundestag seats in total.

But there's a quirk in the system. All the candidates elected directly through the first vote automatically get Bundestag seats. This can lead to the situation where a party has more seats in a particular state than it would theoretically be entitled to, based on its share of the second vote. For example, in the 2005 election, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) won 31 out of 35 constituencies in the state of Baden-Württemberg, giving it 31 "direct mandate" seats. However according to its share of the second vote, it would actually have been entitled to only 28 out of the state's 74 seats, meaning it effectively had three "extra" seats.

Parties are allowed to keep the so-called "overhang" seats won in this way and extra seats are created in the Bundestag to account for them.

Unique Situation

Normally these overhang seats don't make a huge difference to the result. In the 2005 election, for example, the center-left Social Democrats won nine overhang seats and the CDU seven. The number of seats in the Bundestag was therefore 614, when the 16 extra overhang seats were added to the normal 598 seats.

But this year overhang seats could play a significant role in the overall result, due to a unique set of circumstances. According to Joachim Behnke, a professor of political science at the University of Friedrichshafen, the upcoming election will generate more overhang seats than ever before, with the likely winners being Angela Merkel's CDU.

The current constellation in opinion polls has the conservatives holding around 36 percent of the vote -- historically almost the lowest level a frontrunner party has had going into a general election -- while at the same time lying more than 10 points ahead of the second biggest party, the center-left Social Democrats, with whom the CDU has ruled in an awkward grand coalition government since 2005. This combination of a relatively low share of the party vote with a huge lead over their nearest rival creates the ideal situation for overhang seats to be generated: The CDU is likely to win many constituencies, which are decided on the first-past-the-post principle, while simultaneously having a relatively low share of the total vote.

Based on a simulation he ran, Behnke believes that this "historically unique situation" could mean that up to 20 overhang seats go to the CDU. Should the Christian Democrats win the projected number of overhang seats, it would boost Merkel's chances of winning a second term and being able to form a new coalition government with her preferred partner, the liberal Free Democrats.

Behnke's prediction that the CDU will benefit from having a number of overhang seats has been seconded by Manfred Güllner, the director of the prestigious Forsa polling institute, and Dieter Nohlen, a professor of political science at Heidelberg University.

Calls for Change

As a result of this quirk, many people are calling for change to the current system. Germany's highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court, ruled last year that the electoral system needs to be changed because it could in certain circumstances distort the will of the electorate. But it gave parliament until 2011 to reform the system and will allow the 2009 election to go ahead under the current system.

The SPD is itching to change the system and has toyed with the idea of backing a motion brought by the opposition Greens. The motion calls for a change in the system that would largely eradicate overhang seats by removing the state-by-state calculation. Instead, all the direct mandates a party wins in all 16 states would be counted together when calculating how many extra seats should be awarded according to the "second vote" results. That way, a large number of direct mandate seats won in one state would be cancelled out by poorer performances elsewhere.

Together with the opposition Left Party, the SPD and Greens could have mustered enough votes to enforce electoral reform in a vote to be held this Friday. But the SPD has abandoned its plan to back the motion because it might bring down the government and breach an agreement among the two ruling parties to refrain from opposing each other in parliament.

Merkel, whose conservatives are -- unsurprisingly -- against reforming the electoral system before the election, has told the SPD to honor its coalition agreement.

"We're loyal to the agreement," said Hubertus Heil, the SPD's general secretary, on Monday. But it's unclear whether all SPD deputies will stick to the party leadership's line.

SPIEGEL Staff

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,633551,00.html

...

Probably true, but let's first see if CDU/CSU implode on election day relative to pre-election polls, like they did in previous federal elections ...

Odds are that they won't this year.

[Tender Branson]

So, let's see which constituencies the CDU and CSU can win relative to 2005:

This is a map of actual constituency "first vote" winners in the 2005 elections:



And here's a projection by election.de, using the latest polls:



It seems the CDU is mostly gaining direct seats in Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen-Anhalt and Saarland.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Another fact from the ARD poll:

Should the German military stay in Afghanistan ?

27% Yes
69% No

This is the highest support for withdrawal that has been measured so far.

In large parts because several German soldiers were killed only a dew days ago.

[big bad fab]

Toying with an electoral reform before general elections, while being sure the reform won't be effective, is normally a losing path for any political party...

As for CDU votes being below pre-election polls, this year, Merkel's strength is more in likely partner, FDP, than in his own party. So, she may make it, after all.

[Franzl]

Those are some good numbers.

I'm still personally undecided. I'd actually prefer to vote CDU for a change...but there's a chance that they'll scare me off into the FDP camp yet again.

[Tender Branson]

Has anyone done a map for 1998, 2002, 2005 or 2009, using only 1 color for the "Center-Left" (SPD+Greens+Left) and another color for the "Center-Right" (CDU/CSU+FDP+NPD+REP+FW) ?

[Franzl]

Is that supposed to mean something that you included the far-right with Democratic parties?

[Tender Branson]

Btw, is there any chance that Mannheim, Freiburg, Lörrach–Müllheim, Stuttgart-North and Munich-North will vote for CDU/CSU when it comes to the constituency vote, to make it a complete sweep in the South ?

In 2005, the results were:

Mannheim: SPD+8.5
Freiburg: SPD+10.7
Lörrach–Müllheim: SPD+3.9
Stuttgart-North: SPD+2.4
Munich-North: SPD+2.7

It is interesting that the folks at election.de suggest that Lörrach–Müllheim might vote CDU, but not Munich-North, despite the first district being closer in 2005 ...

[Tender Branson]

Forschungsgruppe Wahlen for ZDF:

CDU/CSU: 36%
SPD: 25%
FDP: 13%
Greens: 11%
Left: 9%
Others: 6%

Merkel (CDU) vs. Steinmeier (SPD): 59-28

[Franzl]

Could we maybe switch to pure FPTP for this election?

[Hash]

Could we maybe switch to pure FPTP for this election?

FPTP is the worst electoral system ever after fake Italian-Greek-French "proportional representation". Believe me, it is.

[Tender Branson]

Is that supposed to mean something that you included the far-right with Democratic parties?

No, just a map of CDU+FDP would be fine as well ...

BTW, is this your MP ?

[Franzl]

Is that supposed to mean something that you included the far-right with Democratic parties?

No, just a map of CDU+FDP would be fine as well ...

BTW, is this your MP ?

Yes, that's her.

She won by 79 votes in 2005!

[Tender Branson]

Is that supposed to mean something that you included the far-right with Democratic parties?

No, just a map of CDU+FDP would be fine as well ...

BTW, is this your MP ?

Yes, that's her.

She won by 79 votes in 2005!

The interesting thing is that Erika Ober (SPD) defeated her in 2002 and then Ober got defeated by her in 2005, like you said. Despite being defeated in 2005, Lips won a seat in the German Parliament though via party-list and Ober is now in Parliament again, because a SPD member retired and she took his seat ...

[Franzl]

Anyway, Lips is guaranteed to be reelected in September...I'd guess CDU +10 at least.

[Tender Branson]

Anyway, Lips is guaranteed to be reelected in September...I'd guess CDU +10 at least.

If the CDU does not implode like they did in 2005 ...

In June/July 2005 the CDU was ahead of the SPD by 20%, in the end the CDU won by 1 ...

[minionofmidas]

Btw, is there any chance that Mannheim, Freiburg, Lörrach–Müllheim, Stuttgart-North and Munich-North will vote for CDU/CSU when it comes to the constituency vote, to make it a complete sweep in the South ?

In 2005, the results were:

Mannheim: SPD+8.5
Freiburg: SPD+10.7
Lörrach–Müllheim: SPD+3.9
Stuttgart-North: SPD+2.4
Munich-North: SPD+2.7

It is interesting that the folks at election.de suggest that Lörrach–Müllheim might vote CDU, but not Munich-North, despite the first district being closer in 2005 ...

They're expecting the CSU to do worse than the CDU in comparison with 2005.
Maybe the MP for Lorrach is retiring too or something, I dunno.

North Munich people (the most working class part of the city btw... no, not the most leftist or even the poorest part. But the SPD's best part.) have something of a curious tradition of casting constituency votes for Social Democrats and list votes for the CSU, both in the Bavarian Landtag and the Bundestag.  As long as they know the Social Democrat in question, of course. (No, he doesn't have to be some "business-friendly" ultramoderate. Franz Maget certainly is not. On the contrary. Being a union guy ought to help.)

[minionofmidas]

Anyway, Lips is guaranteed to be reelected in September...I'd guess CDU +10 at least.

If the CDU does not implode like they did in 2005 ...

In June/July 2005 the CDU was ahead of the SPD by 20%, in the end the CDU won by 1 ...

It won't implode by that much, simply because it's current figures aren't that inflated.

I don't see CDU-CSU-FDP get a majority though. Unless turnout drops to 70 or below. And it'll be interesting to see how much tactical constituency voting there'll be, and by whom - I'm not really predicting anything on that count, except for the general direction (up). Depends in part on how much media play the issue gets, though.