German Elections & Politics

[Tender Branson]

Saarland: At 2PM 32,6% of the voters have cast their ballots. That's a little higher then in 2012 (31,1%) but significantly lower then 2009 (36,7%). In 2012 the full turnout was 61,6%, in 2009 67,6% and in 2004 55,5%. So as it stands the turnout will be somewhere between 62% and 64% which is pretty much the norm in the last 20 years.

Do you know if the 2pm figure includes postal ballots or not ?

If there's a higher number of postal voters this year, turnout could be higher ...

[Tender Branson]

The CDU will definitely celebrate tonight.

I would say so too. AKK is a fairly popular governor and the incumbency advantage should lead to a nice victory for the CDU. I don't think the Rehlinger-SPD can pull this out, considering they have a bigger opposition with the Left and the Greens (16% combined) than the CDU has with the FDP and AfD (11%).

[Tender Branson]

BTW:

These are the 2 frontrunners of the SPD (left) and CDU (right), at a demo against the NPD:

[Tender Branson]

The ARD election day survey preview indicates an easy win for the CDU.

85% of voters say their personal economic situation is excellent/good, 65% say the same for the state.

76% approve of Governor AKK's job (68% of her SPD-counterpart).

By a 63-21 margin, voters say AKK is the stronger leader than Rehlinger.

[Tender Branson]

18:00 ARD Exit Poll:

41.0% CDU [+5.8]
29.5% SPD [-1.1]
13.0% Left
  6.0% AfD
  3.0% FDP
  4.5% Greens

Turnout 71% (+10%)

[Tender Branson]

But, but...what about the Schulz Train?

Pretty easy:



(nah ... just a joke, this election was just really local and considering AKK's approval ratings, this was expected.)

[Tender Branson]

18:00 ARD exit poll:







18:00 ZDF exit poll:

[Tender Branson]

First ARD projection (based on already-counted precincts):



First ZDF projection (based on already-counted precincts):

[Tender Branson]

The CDU mobilized more than twice as many non-voters than the SPD ...

Notice that turnout went up 10% to 71%.

[Tender Branson]

Here is the actual count:

7/52 cities counted.

http://www.statistikextern.saarland.de/wahl/internet_saar/LT_SL/landesergebnisse/

[Tender Branson]

CDU at 42.4% and SPD at 29.7% right now. Any new seat projection?

 
 
Most likely 24 CDU, 17 SPD, 7 Linke, 3 AfD. The two largest cities Saarbrücken and Neuenkichen aren't in yet but something big would need to happen to give Red-Red the majority.

Saarbrücken is actually fully counted already.

[Tender Branson]

The NRW election could end up being the reverse of the Saarland election: In Saarland, the popular CDU-Governor was responsible for pushing the party above 40%, 5% more than what polling showed. The SPD underperformed, even though their frontrunner was also quite popular.

In NRW, it's Governor Hannelore Kraft (SPD) who has very high ratings (64% approving of her job), while the CDU-guy only has 40% approval ratings. Even Christian ("Barney") Lindner (FDP) has better ratings than the CDU-guy ...



And in a direct vote for Governor, Kraft is also far ahead of the CDU-guy:



On the other hand, NRW has 18 million people vs the 1 million in Saarland, so this might shake things up - but I still believe Kraft and the SPD might outperform the polls there. I guess the Greens will take a bigger hit tough.

[Tender Branson]

I'm now even more confident that May 14 will end up being a great day for Kraft and the SPD.

[Tender Branson]

Forsa dropped a Berlin Poll and I thought it's maybe interesting to compare it with the results of last October's election:  
  
SPD: 25% (+3,4)  
CDU: 20% (+2,4)  
Linke: 16% (+0,4)  
Grüne: 13% (-2,2)  
AfD: 8% (-6,2)  
FDP: 7% (+0,3)  
  
  
So it kinda proves the general direction we're seeing all over the country. AfD is falling but definitely isn't done yet. The SPD has it's Schulz-Effect which at the same time weakens the Greens while Linke and FDP don't give a f*** and stay roughly the same.  

Who's getting the other 11%? Seems a pretty high % for "others" with respect to the national scenario.

In the 2016 Berlin state election, "others" got more than 9%:

2.0% The Party
1.9% Animal Rights Party
1.7% Pirate Party
1.1% Grey Panthers
0.6% NPD
0.5% Party for Health Research
0.4% proGermany
0.4% Alliance for Progress
0.2% German Communist Party

And a few others with 0.1% each

[Tender Branson]

I seriously doubt that Red-Maroon-Green will get a majority in September ...

In the end, Merkel will pull this out again and there'll be a renewed Grand Coalition.

[Tender Branson]

NRW poll:



Majorities for SPD-CDU and SPD-FDP-Greens.

Did I miss anything ?

No majorities for SPD-Greens-Left (48) and CDU-FDP-AfD (48).

[Tender Branson]

For those of you who can speak or read German: Michael Klonovsky (center right journalist) has written a rather scathing piece on Petry and her husband Marcus Pretzell, essentially accusing the latter of having the integrity of a used car salesman and the former of being under his spell. Klonovsky was hired last year to be Petry's PR guy/media adviser. Apparently Pretzell then also asked Klonovsky to write some speeches for him. Now it's been revealed that Pretzell never paid for those speeches and flat out denies he has ever used any sort of work from Klonovksy.

Klonovsky has now called on AfD members to depose of Petry and Pretzell (who's head of the party's NRW branch and presumably about to be elected into the state parliament). In his view the couple are preoccupied with fighting enemies (real or imagined) within the party rather than attempting to advance any sort of policy or fighting for the general good of the party.

https://www.michael-klonovsky.de/16-michael/artikel/474-bonnie-und-clyde-der-afd

The AfD seems to be a total disaster internally and an infant political party compared with the well-oiled FPÖ here.

[Tender Branson]

And that's it : AfD fourth behind die Linke. But I see they had already fallen from third in an Allensbach poll from late March, polling even fifth.

Well, it's only Forsa and we all know (but some might not want to aknowledge) that Gülle-Güllner is not a pollster, he's a political heck ;-)

Von Storch would be great, but it will be Alice Weidel. As a sheep wanting to kill Germany, I would be scared now because she can't be smeared in the normal left-wing media way ;-)

At the end of course it has to be said that it's veeeeeeery different that the German Opposition gets less TV time than the Turkish one ^^

The "German Opposition" is not only the AfD though ...

[Tender Branson]

And that's it : AfD fourth behind die Linke. But I see they had already fallen from third in an Allensbach poll from late March, polling even fifth.

Well, it's only Forsa and we all know (but some might not want to aknowledge) that Gülle-Güllner is not a pollster, he's a political heck ;-)


Von Storch would be great, but it will be Alice Weidel. As a sheep wanting to kill Germany, I would be scared now because she can't be smeared in the normal left-wing media way ;-)

At the end of course it has to be said that it's veeeeeeery different that the German Opposition gets less TV time than the Turkish one ^^

It would certainly be interesting somehow to see a highly successful lesbian woman like Alice Weidel leading the AfD into the federal election, but I don't see how she becomes the frontrunner. She's hardly known to members outside BW and she didn't even make it as BW party leader recently.

[Tender Branson]

AfD convention in Cologne has started.

Some 50.000 left-leftist extremists and protesters are expected outside the convention hall and some have already intimidated and attacked convention guests.

Will be interesting what comes out of this ... probably a Gauland/Weidel ticket or something.

[Tender Branson]

Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland will lead the AfD as the top two into the general election in september. While Frauke Petry remains chairwoman of the AfD and the leading candidate of the AfD Saxony, Weidel and Gauland will be the national faces of the the party.

Weidel (38) is said to be a representative of the libertarian faction of the party. She is known for fundamental critic against the Euro and the European Union, and she supported the expulsion of Björn Höcke. Gauland (76) is an extreme nationalist and a supporter of Höcke. He was involved in a scandal when he said in 2016 that no one would like to live next to Jerome Boateng (famous black German soccer player). He also stated that Germany needs a strong border policy and that Germany needs to "endure these horrible pictures" and that it "must not get blackmailed by the eyes of refugee children". Gaulands daughter is a protestand priest who called the remarks of her father "disgusting". She herself gives shelter to a man from Eritrea in her parsonage. It's clear that Gauland is not a huge sympathy factor.

Yeah, I expected this ticket.

And it makes sense for the AfD. You've got the common-sense moderate part of the ticket with Weidel and the extreme right part with Gauland.

Both wings within the party can be happy now. If they still f**k up the election, you cannot help this party anymore.

[Tender Branson]

 If the Bundestag election leads to a CDU/CSU FDP near majority of seats, with RRG further behind in seats and a AFD delegation holding the rest of the seats, would a minority CDU/CSU FDP government be a possibility?

Why would they risk a minority government with the FDP when they can get another cozy grand coalition with the SPD as junior partner, who then keeps on losing the next general election again in 2021 ?

[Tender Branson]

New YouGov NRW poll:



Time for Hannelore Kraft to chill, after that outlier-ish looking ARD poll.

[Tender Branson]

A new ZDF poll shows the CDU overtaking the SPD in Schleswig-Holstein (votes next Sunday):



Greens remain quite strong up there. Any reason for that ?

[Tender Branson]

Totally out of the loop here. Haven't looked at the polling for several months and just noticed that the SPD has jumped about 10% over the past two months or so. Can anyone give me a brief explanation of why that is?

A very short summary:

A guy named Martin Schulz took over the SPD and he was instantly seen as the new Jesus of the party that will save them from all their ills. But Schulz turned out to be a blank slate and of course he's an overrated Eurocrat (who would have totally flopped here in Austria). And more and more Germans who flirted with him and the SPD over the past months are realizing now that there's only hot air surrounding him and now the bubble is over ...

Maybe some of the German posters can present a more detailed analysis.

PS: Stop editing my posts Hash, you fascist fu**er.