German Elections & Politics

[Bumaye]

Anyhow, the rise of CDU and FDP comes at the expanse of the AfD who dwindles back into irrelevancy. Today's Emnid poll sees them at only 7% which is the lowest for the party in an Emnid poll in 19 months. The unweighted "political climate" of Forschungsgruppe Wahlen even sees them as low as 5%. 
 
Good that gay marriage is finally a thing, it was about damn time. But honestly seeing the SPD celebrate that as their victory is annoying. If they chose the right coalition partners after the last election they could have gotten that and many other things years ago.

[Bumaye]

Spent the last three days collecting signatures but apparently we did it! Die PARTEI will be on the ballot in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and with that in all 16 states! Last election the party only made it onto 5 state ballots. With how hopeless many leftists are right now regarding the chances for R2G I think it will be at least 0,7% in September but if things go right I could see us getting 1% nationwide. In addition to Martin Sonneborn and Serdar Somuncu a few days ago Nico Semsrott was named as frontrunner in Berlin so that are quite some figureheads. Die PARTEI currently has 24.000 members by the way, the AfD for comparison has 28.000 members.

 

[Bumaye]

I wonder, what would happen if the joke party got seats? Also, don't they have an MEP? What's he doing?

 
  
What you think would happen? Die PARTEI has seats in several city councils and county parliaments for years. They simply do their job. Funnier and more colorful then others but still. And so does MEP Sonneborn. He spoke in the parliament about things like the Armenian genocide, acts of torture by the CIA or Ireland refusing to collect taxes from Apple. He is in the delegation for cooperation with the Korean Peninsula and a member of the cultural committee. Additionally he reports about things that go wrong in Brussels and Strasbourg in his series "Sonneborn saves the EU" in cooperation with Spiegel TV.

[Bumaye]

Where is the most conservative part of Germany located?

The most conservative+populist right areas in Germany are in Bavaria, southern Baden-Württemberg, the state of Saxony and the area around Cloppenburg-Vechta in Lower Saxony (close to the border to the Netherlands). Those are all areas in which the CDU/CSU got more than 55% and/or in which the AfD did really well too.

 
 
I'd like to add Vorpommern. In last years election Vorpommern-Greifswald III (32,3%) and Vorpommern-Greifswald II (27,6%) had the AfD far in the lead as strongest party with the CDU in districts both at ~20% plus 6% in both districts for the NPD. In Vorpommern-Rügen II all three combined had like 53% and 52% in Vorpommern-Greifswald V.

[Bumaye]

I get that the Stadtstaaten are a bit financially unstable, and the Saar and NRW are postindustrial, but what's up with Schleswig-Holstein?

 
 
What do you expect? Their two biggest companies are the Oil Refinery Heide and the Shipping Company Oldendorff Carriers. The city of Stuttgart alone has Mercedes, Porsche and Bosch.   
 
And it's not just the global players. Of the top 1.000 family businesses in Germany at least per capita Schleswig-Holstein is dead last in West Germany.

[Bumaye]

Green MP in Lower Saxony will apparently defect to the CDU, meaning the red-green coalition has lost its majority.

 
  
And she left because she wasn't put on the state parties list for the next state election in January. What a self-absorbed bit**.

[Bumaye]

Average age of members of the 8 largest parties: 
 

[Bumaye]

What a boring election campaign it's been thus far.

 
 
So much this. It's really easy to forget that the election is in 6 weeks because there is hardly any discussions. Everyone knows the Merkelnator will win another election in a landslide and nobody is discussing actual topics.

[Bumaye]

So actually he told them not to vote. That's the only reading that makes at least a little bit of sense.

Or they are to vote for the BIG, the German branch of the AKP.

 
 
That will be very hard since the BIG is not running in a single state.

[Bumaye]

Linke - 85%
Greens - 84%
SPD - 70%
FDP - 54%
CDU/CSU - 38%
AFD - 29%

 
 
Damn that's close. 
 
Mine is: 
Greens 86% 
Left: 85% 
SPD: 68% 
FDP: 54% 
Union: 39% 
AfD: 27%

[Bumaye]

The Wahlomat for the election is online.

My results (among the 32 parties that took part):

70.5% The Party

 
 
Well Tender, you know what you have to do now: https://die-partei.at/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/aufnahmeantrag-21.pdf 
 
Of course for me Die PARTEI is on top as well, at least for the relevant parties. 
 
Here my chart for parties I at one point or the other in the last year thought about voting for: 
 
 
And here is the list for the 8 crazy and/or asshole-parties. The AfD made it behind two literal fascist parties, it always impresses me. 
   
 
 
All parties considered I have a total of 6 (!) above 80%. On top is the "Mountainparty" a small anarchist party from Berlin with ironically 88%.

[Bumaye]

Believe it or not, DIE PARTEI does have a realistic chance of being represented in the next Bundestag...

 
 
I did call them relevant with my comment. A party with alomost as many members as the AfD that runs in the whole country and is in the EU parliament obviously has some relevance. Though I don't think we will get more then 5%. I already would be very pleased with 2% which would be more then 10 times higher then last election.

[Bumaye]

Do you know who competes in Ströbele's district, who will have resigned after the election?

 
 
The Kançler himself, Serdar Somuncu. Problem is the polls see him at 6,5%. Ahead of AfD and FDP, sure, but still far behind Linke and Grüne. http://wahlkreisprognose.de/berlin-bund.html#fhain 
 
If he could land ahead of the CDU, that would be great already.

[Bumaye]

Do you know who competes in Ströbele's district, who will have resigned after the election?

 
  
The Kançler himself, Serdar Somuncu. Problem is the polls see him at 6,5%. Ahead of AfD and FDP, sure, but still far behind Linke and Grüne. http://wahlkreisprognose.de/berlin-bund.html#fhain  
  
If he could land ahead of the CDU, that would be great already.

Do you happen to live in that district?

 
  
Nope, living in Schwerin, Wahlkreis 12. It's a save CDU win here. Probably gonna give that vote to the MLPD candidate, just for the lols.

[Bumaye]

Merkel choking?



http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/yougov.htm

 
 
Today 38,5% (Allensbach) and 38% (Forsa) for the CDU in other polls. YouGov is the only one conducted post-debate though. Merkel was solid but Lindner was way better the day after so that maybe brought two percent from black to yellow.

[Bumaye]

Die PARTEI in Dresden with the imho best poster in this election year:  
  

  
The style of the poster is taken from the CDU which uses the slogan "For a country where we can live well." This one instead reads "For a beach where we can lay well." and shows dead refugee Aylan Kurdi who drowned in the Mediterranean.  
  
Lot's of Dresdners and Users online where enraged that this "goes to far" so they released a statement:  
  

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[Bumaye]

I did not expect an AFD resurgence. What happened? It doesn't look like cdu voters are going to them. Are there a bunch of SPD AFD swing voters? It doesn't look like the left is getting the same bump

 
 
It's a swing from "My god, maybe we can really get rid of Merkel!" back to " it, she is unbeatable, at least let's send a message by voting for the AfD". 
 
I don't know, of course I don't want a strong AfD but seeing the SPD crash and burn would be funny at least.

[Bumaye]

The SPD really needs to revise its strategy after this election because it obviously isn't a winning strategy. The FDP, as much as I dislike its current incarnation, did that after they dropped out in 2013 and they're now back on track. They actually didn't change all that much: More focus on digital policy and education, being more hipsterish in communicating their message. It worked for them. However, the SPD can't simply copy that. They have to find their own way. Preferably, they'll do that while they're in opposition. Because when they're busy with governing, they have less time to reform their own party.

 
 
Remember when in 2009 the SPD lost a third of their voters and landed in the opposition? What changed back then in the party? Absolutely nothing.

[Bumaye]

ZDF proves, again, that they are way more left-wing than ARD...

 
You act like ZDF would make these polls themselves and not Forschungsgruppe Wahlen Telefonfeld GmbH.

[Bumaye]

Die PARTEI had YouGov ask some questions to 2.000 people. The result: 20% of the Germans would like to see Die PARTEI in the Bundestag, among 25 to 44 year old voters it's even 31%. The support for Die PARTEI rises with higher educated people. Berlin and NRW were the most supportive states of the idea to see Die PARTEI in the German parliament, in both 8% strongly supported it and 17% said that they somewhat support it. When it comes to political parties Die PARTEI only gets 11% from CDU/CSU-affiliated voters but 42% from Die Linke affiliated voters. 30% of the Germans would like to see Die PARTEI represented more often in political talkshows.

[Bumaye]

The results for the U18 election in 1.500 schools across the nation are in:  
  
CDU: 28,3%  
SPD: 19,8%  
Grüne: 16,7%  
Linke: 8,3%  
AfD: 6,8%  
FDP: 5,7%  
Animal Protection Party: 3,9%  
Die PARTEI: 3,0%  
Pirate Party: 2,7%  
NPD: 1,2%  
 

I actually think there's a decent chance Die PARTEI AfD-2013s this, as in performing best of the minor parties and then spinning that into a surge where they can get in to the various Landtags that are having elections next.

 
 
Nah, I think the only chance is a city state election and the next one is Bremen in early 2019.   
Though I doubt it would go down like the Pirate Party. The difference is that people wanted legit answers from the Pirates which they couldn't provide at that point. Nobody expects Die PARTEI to have serious answers, their job is to criticize the established parties from the left as the AfD does from the right.

[Bumaye]

Exactly. During the 2014 European elections, when the voter-turnout was extremely low in Germany (48.1%), where the 3% threshold had just been abolished, the PARTEI only received 0.6% of the vote, which was barely sufficient to win one single seat in the European Parliament.

But there is indeed a tiny chance that the PARTEI will be represented in the next Bundestag...

 
  
You write that as if 0,6% were a bad result. In the German election only a year earlier they received only 0,18% of the votes. Now people talk about 2% already. Die PARTEI exists since 2004 and they have only gained with each election. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Especially if we go into a next Grand Coalition.  
  
BTT:  
  
I Side With:  
-PARTEI: 85%
-Grüne: 83%  
-Linke 82%  
-SPD: 75%  
-FDP: 53%  
-CDU: 50%  
-AFD: 26% 
 
But yeah, that thing is horsesh**t. It includes ALFA which 1) is named LKR now and 2) is not running in this election.

[Bumaye]

Prediction: 
 
Union: 36,7% 
SPD: 21,0% 
AfD: 11,5% 
Linke: 10,1% 
FDP: 8,0% 
Grüne: 7,1% 
PARTEI: 1,6% 
Pirates: 1,1% 
Others: 2,1%   
 
For me it's a good day if: 
* Black-Yellow doesn't have a majority
* Die PARTEI gets above 1,3% 
* AfD stays below 12,5% 
* Linke gets above 9,5%   

[Bumaye]

What's the AfD's stance on economic issues? Are they still really right-wing on economic issues like a couple of years ago or did they moderate to attract low income blue-collar workers or unemployed voters?

 
   
Economically somewhere around the FDP but with much bigger social security cuts.

[Bumaye]

First time ever that Die Linke is strongest party in a Berlin state election poll. Mainly because Berlin is an electoral clusterf**k.  
  
Die Linke: 19%  
CDU: 19%  
SPD: 18%  
Grüne: 15%  
AfD: 11%  
FDP: 9%  
Others: 9%  
  
The ruling R2G coalition stands basically unchanged at 52%, same as in the election a year ago only that SPD lost 3,5% and Linke gained 3,5%.