🇩🇪 German state & local elections

[Beezer]

At some point sooner or later, SPD will fall below the 5% threshold in some regional election

Let's hope so. Maybe then they will get the message that being in bed with the CDU while offering Green positions with a slightly more working class rhetoric is not a winning message for the party.

[Beezer]

GroKo survives thanks to the incredibly low expectations going into these elections.

[Beezer]

I think right now there are 4 districts that have been won by the AfD with candidates not on the list...

Erzgebirge 2
Vogtland 1
Mittelsachsen 4
Bautzen 3

[Beezer]

OK, I think I might have been looking at an outdated table over on the Tagesschau site... http://wahl.tagesschau.de/wahlen/2019-09-01-LT-DE-SN/index.shtml

[Beezer]

If you add up the votes from Brandenburg and Saxony, the AfD did manage to come in first...barely.

AfD: 26.02%
CDU: 26.01%
SPD: 14.5%
Left: 10.5%
Greens: 9.4%

[Beezer]

Media takes I've seen this morning have tended to be along the lines of "the AfD have hit their ceiling". Given they only made minor improvements on 2017, that isn't a totally outrageous claim - even if it seems a little premature.

I always wonder what these commentators were expecting in terms of the electoral outcome? That the AfD was going to win 50-60% of the vote? Yes, the AfD in its current state probably has a ceiling of around 30% in most EGerman states. That would still make it the strongest party however. And who knows what might happen 5, 10, 20 years down the road. A few years ago nobody would have expected to see an FPÖ candidate win 50% of the vote in a presidential election.

[Beezer]

Amazing that the CDU somehow manages to lose 11 points despite having a leftist government in power. And apparently the CDU may very well arrive at the conclusion that joining Ramelow in government will be the right response to this.

[Beezer]

The Merkel loyalists are gearing up for war as well. Daniel Günther, the popular minister-president of Jamaica Schleswig-Holstein has today dismissed the criticism of Merz and Koch. He spoke of "old men" who would like "to settle old scores" and I really cannot say that he's wrong with this interpretation. Honestly, it's a disaster for the CDU if people there still listen to guys like Koch.

Why should they listen to Merkel and her supporters instead, in light of her electoral track record? The CDU is moving from electoral disaster to electoral disaster. The only reason why Merkel has been in power is because there have been no serious alternatives to the Grand Coalition and because the SPD is even weaker. 3 of Merkel's 4 election results are among the bottom 5 in the history of the party. She has completely hollowed out the party ideologically and her handpicked successor has turned out to be one of the biggest political duds in recent history.

[Beezer]

Why they should listen to Merkel? Because Merkel is the only reason why the CDU still polls between 25% and 30% at the federal level and hasn't suffered the tragic fate of the SPD yet.

Where is the evidence that millions of voters are sticking with the CDU because of Merkel? Or rather that this number is far higher than those who have abandoned the party because of its clear lack of a conservative agenda. I simply reject the notion that many voters are wedded to the CDU because of the chancellor. Just look at the basic statistics. The party is far weaker in terms of support today than it was before Merkel. So where are all the people that Merkel supposedly brought into the party? There is ample space to grow on the right, an ideological area that has been ceded to the AfD. A slight tick to the right has, in my view at least, a far bigger potential electoral upside than trying to out-green the Greens.

The SPD is suffering from a variety of other ailments that are similar to the CDU's but have been exacerbated by the fact that the party has had to contend with two challengers on the left for the past 15 odd years. Add to that the lack of a coherent strategy on its traditional core issue of the welfare state and you get a 15% party. But Merkel's CDU is quickly getting there for similar reasons...

She also didn't "hollow out" anything by the way, she just modernized the CDU, led it into the 21st century, and got rid of positions for which there was no majority anymore.

Is the point of a party to just follow public opinion and discard positions just because some polls indicate they are no longer favored by a majority? Moreover, Merkel has abandoned long-held views from one day to the next. Nuclear energy, same-sex marriage...sorry but there is no visible and coherent strategy to modernize the party behind her actions but rather a complete lack of foresight while being driven by the polling of the day.

There moreover is plenty of potential for a conservative party to celebrate electoral wins in an era of globalization as people are looking for some traditional societal moorings. Doesn't mean you have to criminalize homosexuality or anything like that but just copying the left's position on immigration and their Familienbild is not what I would described as a sound strategy for a center-right party.

And that's where we get to the point of "governing". What is the point in governing if you fail to enact any policies that have your party's handwriting on it? Can you cite a single policy over the past 14 years that can be described as a stated CDU goal which was then enacted as a result of Merkel's time in office? She has governed as a center-left chancellor on virtually every topic. Is the CDU these days all about "office seeking" rather than "policy seeking"? And even in that regard Merkel has failed as she provided the SPD and CSU with the best ministerial posts after the most recent election.

And this "electoral disaster to electoral disaster" narrative is likewise contestable.

Look at the CDU's standing in its former heartland of Baden-Württemberg. Merkels "modernization" of the party seems to have played really well in that part of the country. And the demise in EGermany can't just be brushed aside either. You have a leftist government in power in Thuringia, yet the CDU still manages to lose 11 points?

I will acknowledge that catch-all parties across Europe are suffering from similar challenges. The days of the CDU winning 40-45% of the vote are long over. Great politicians are able to modernize a party, however, without completely removing its central ideological tenets.

[Beezer]

Where do you see a “lack of a conservative agenda”? Is it just because Merkel, over the course of almost 14 years, got rid of some (mostly symbolic and anachronistic) elements of the Kohl-CDU? Was it really a mistake to give in on same-sex marriage (an issue which 75-80% of the population support), to abolish conscription (something that almost all European countries did years ago), or to finally abandon nuclear energy (which many people also supported in the wake of the Fukushima incident)? The strange thing about this argument is that most of these political manoeuvers took place many years ago (e.g. Energiewende: 2010+; Conscription: 2011), but Merkel nonetheless got an excellent result in 2013. Since then, her government has in many areas even become more conservative (just look at the most recent legislation on asylum policy) but to no avail. Of course, this is fundamentally a matter of perspective.

It is a matter of perspective indeed. Keeping the borders open and allowing people w/o any documentation to come into the country was not a conservative move (nor was it sensible from a security perspective which used to be an area where the conservatives claimed issue ownership as well). Her supposed shift to the right on asylum policy is also not evident to me. Deporting people whose asylum claims have been rejected is not an exclusively conservative position. Besides, it's not as if the government is actually cracking down on asylum tourism and fraud.

The point about nuclear energy is this: Merkel was in favor of it before making a horrible U-turn on the basis of an earthquake on the other side of the world. As a result, Germany's CO2 goals have not been met. That's not leadership. That's typical Merkel behavior of listening to pollsters who present her with solutions that have a shelf life of a couple of months. After Fukushima Merkel could have acted like a leader and made the case that nuclear energy is still safe and clean (as illustrated by our neighbor France's decision to expand its use of it). Why is no one copying Germany's Energiewende? Because it's turned out to be a disaster in terms of CO2 emissions and costs for the average consumer and businesses. On energy and the environment, Merkel's one and a half decades in office have been a giant waste of time.

Looking at her broader track record, I once again ask the question: Can anyone cite a single piece of legislation over the past 14 years where one might say that this was a stated CDU goal which was enacted by the Merkel government(s)? I mean FFS, the CDU used to be the party of small government, but even during a period of decent economic growth, the issue of taxes hasn't been touched at all by her. Merkel has governed like a red-green chancellor.

As far as I know, there is no empirical proof that center-right parties benefit from becoming ‘more conservative’. Rather the contrary seems to be the case – at least when it comes to electoral results in Western and Northern Europe (Kriesi et al. are currently working on this).

Most people want clear alternatives. I understand that catch-all parties can no longer provide these. Still, Merkel has created a party which stands for...exactly what? There is no defining feature of the CDU anymore. Which is why I think it needs to present a sensible, more conservative image. Nobody gives a crap about gay marriage anymore. But it is possible to run campaigns on the CDU's immigration platform from 15 years ago which had a far less benevolent interpretation of multiculturalism. Plenty of data does illustrate that on the issue of immigration, there is a fair bit of potential to present a more restrictive image with great electoral potential. Once you scratch the surface, you see that west Europeans as well are hardly enthusiastic about more immigration from significantly poorer parts of the globe. 

I don't buy the argument that the average German supports the Green position on immigration and asylum and therefore the CDU has no choice but to parrot Habeck on the topic. I actually wholeheartedly agree with Ann Coulter on this topic: If center-right actors present a tough line on immigration, they win. Why did the CDU have its worst result since 1949 in 2017? Largely because of Merkel's handling of the migrant crisis in 2015 and her refusal to acknowledge that mistakes had been made.

All of this brings us back to the main point: What is a party's objective? Is it to come in first with 25% of the vote and officially hold the office of head of government (w/o leaving a mark) or is it the implementation of certain policies? Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but as a voter I would prefer the latter. 

[Beezer]

The Greens should mind their own business. They're gonna bring down a coalition over the non-expulsion of some local party member who claims he's no longer a member of the far right?