German Elections & Politics

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Year	Chancellor candidate	CSU top candidate	Union (PV)	Union (%)	CSU (PV)	CSU (% fed.)	CSU (% Bav.)	CSU share
1949	Konrad Adenauer	Hanns Seidel	7,359,084	31.0%	1,380,448	5.8%	29.2%	18.8%
1953	Konrad Adenauer	Fritz Schäffer	12,443,981	45.2%	2,427,387	8.9%	47.8%	19.5%
19571)	Konrad Adenauer	Fritz Schäffer	15,008,399	50.2%	3,133,060	10.5%	57.2%	20.9%
1961	Konrad Adenauer	Franz J. Strauß	14,298,372	45.3%	3,014,471	9.6%	54.9%	21.1%
1965	Ludwig Erhard	Franz J. Strauß	15,524,068	47.6%	3,136,506	9.6%	55.6%	20.2%
1969	Kurt G. Kiesinger	Franz J. Strauß	15,195,187	46.1%	3,115,652	9.5%	54.4%	20.5%
19722)	Rainer Barzel	Franz J. Strauß	16,806,020	44.9%	3,615,183	9.7%	55.1%	21.5%
1976	Helmut Kohl	Franz J. Strauß	18,394,801	48.6%	4,027,499	10.6%	60.0%	21.9%
1980	Franz J. Strauß	Franz J. Strauß	16,897,659	44.5%	3,908,459	10.3%	57.6%	23.1%
1983	Helmut Kohl	Franz J. Strauß	18,998,545	48.8%	4,140,865	10.6%	59.5%	21.8%
1987	Helmut Kohl	Franz J. Strauß	16,761,572	44.3%	3,715,827	9.8%	55.1%	22.2%
19903)	Helmut Kohl	Theo Waigel	20,358,096	43.8%	3,302,980	7.1%	51.9%	16.2%
1994	Helmut Kohl	Theo Waigel	19,517,156	41.4%	3,427,196	7.3%	51.2%	17.6%
1998	Helmut Kohl	Theo Waigel	17,329,388	35.1%	3,324,480	6.7%	47.7%	19.2%
2002	Edmund Stoiber	Edmund Stoiber	18,482,641	38.5%	4,315,080	9.0%	58.6%	23.3%
2005	Angela Merkel	Edmund Stoiber	16,631,049	35.2%	3,494,309	7.4%	49.2%	21.0%
2009	Angela Merkel	Peter Ramsauer	14,658,515	33.8%	2,830,238	6.5%	42.5%	19.3%
2013	Angela Merkel	Gerda Hasselfeldt	18,165,446	41.5%	3,243,569	7.4%	49.3%	17.9%

1) First election after the Saarland's reunification with West Germany. Only time the CSU also competed outside of Bavaria; the federal CSU result includes the Saarland votes.
2) The voting age had been lowered from 21 to 18, hence the marked increase in votes.
3) First election after Reunification, hence the large increase in votes.

PS: If you wanna know how great pains I took to create this chart, take a look at the source code... 😓

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What is the FDP's current ideological stance?

None. The FDP always was a one-man party and always will.

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Any clue what party this woman will voted (or already have voted) for?

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Any clue what party this woman will voted (or already have voted) for?

I guess she's a Conservative. So, CSU.

I was asking because most Spätaussiedler vote AfD, and she always refused to answer questions about her political views.

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I wonder what party Heidi Klum votes for...

Democrats

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I wonder what party Heidi Klum votes for...

Democrats

So you're saying she would probably vote for Merkel and the CDU?

Definitely.
I just read that she kept her German citizenship, so she probably supports Hillary and Merkel.
I wonder if she also supports the Democrats if Bernie or Liz are the Democratic nominees and if Trump didn't run.

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This woman, the former mattress of the Rammstein singer and now stopgap of Gewn Stefanie's former husband, has also endorsed Merkel, because she "never causes scandal"...

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I found an artile on cnn.com about gay men supporting the AfD:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

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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.

But - in contrast to the FDP - the AfD supports the minimum wage, they want to raise the welfare benefits and they are against university tuitions.

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2 Questions:

1.) Who will become Norbert Lammert's successor as President of the Bundestag? I have a feeling that Uschi will occupy that office...

2) What happens if the Greens won't take the 5% hurdle (which some pundits don't rule out)? Another grand coalition? Or even a Bahamas coalition?

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1. Schäuble maybe? The SPD should claim the finance ministry in a grand coalition (they might even claim both the finance and foreign ministry) and in a Jamaica coalition FDP probably will claim the finance ministry (and the Greens could get the foreign ministry). I can't see Schäuble at a lesser ministry like Defence or Economic Affairs so President of the Bundestag is the next best thing left.

2. It's very possible that CDU/CSU-FDP has a majority in that case. Otherwise grand coalition I guess? Or perhaps new elections, but I don't think the Germans would appreciate that.

1.) It's possible. Did you know that the Bundestag changed its parliamentary law? We have a parliamentary post called Alterspräsident ("president by seniority"); he is used to be the oldest member of the Bundestag and presides until the new speaker takes up office. In this and the last legislative period, Christian Democrat Heinz Riesenhuber (81), who will have resigned after this election, held this office.
From sheer fear of Alexander Gauland becoming the Alterspräsident in the next legislative session, the Bundestag changed the rules and will make the longest member of parliament occupy this office, i.e. presumably Schäuble.

2.) I think SPD+Linke+AfD would still have more seats than CDU+CSU+FDP.

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So, it seems that the CSU will get around 6 percent of the votes. What would they do in the future if they were in danger of falling below 5 percent nationally? Would they start running in other states, or would they be integrated with the CDU?

The 5% hurdle for the CSU would not really apply:

The CSU would still be represented in the Bundestag via winning direct seats (and they win every single seat in Bavaria).

Like in math at school: Wrong way, but correct result.
The CSU is exempted from the 5% threshold as they build one unit along with the CDU and as both parties don't compete against each other in any state.
The same applied to the WASG and the PDS in 2005; the West German WASG entered the Bundestag although they didn't reach 5%.

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What's going to happen for the Cabinet? Will Lindner get the foreign department and the Greens get the finance minister?

Lindner will probably stay in the Bundestag, like Kubicki does in Schleswig-Holstein.
I guess that - since Joachim Herrmann (CSU) is entitled to the interior ministry - Alexander Sebastian Léonce Freiherr von der Wenge Graf Lambsdorff MdE (FDP) will become foreign minister and someone from the greens (maybe Renate Künast?) will occupy the justice ministry.

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What's going to happen for the Cabinet? Will Lindner get the foreign department and the Greens get the finance minister?

More likely the other way around.

Greens getting the finance would be like clowns running the asylum.

Schleswig-Holstein used to have a kindergarten teacher from the Greens as its finance minister, and guess which is the only Land whose government debt rose in the last four years...

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What's going to happen for the Cabinet? Will Lindner get the foreign department and the Greens get the finance minister?

Try to ask that question again in, maybe, two months from now. Perhaps three.

So far, it's unclear whether there even will be a Jamaica cabinet. If it comes to that, it's a process that's gonna take weeks or even months. First, there are gonna be rounds and rounds of negotiations which will determine if all four governing parties can find common ground... with both the Greens and the CSU at the table, that's not gonna be easy. If all parties can - in theory - agree on a coalition, both FDP and Greens will also let all their members have a vote on it. That too is something that needs time to be organized and executed.

What do you think a coalition agreement will be like? What would an agreement between the FDP and Greens on economics look like?

"We abolish all social benefits and all kind of employment protection and in return we allow all people to smoke weed."

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What's going to happen for the Cabinet? Will Lindner get the foreign department and the Greens get the finance minister?

I read that the FDP recruited Werner Hoyer for finance minister. Lindner would rather sacrifice the foreign department than not having an FDP finance minister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Hoyer

Exactly. It is said that it was Westerwelle's biggest mistake that led to his party's death to occupy the foreign ministry instead of the finance or economy ministry.

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the FDP aren't going to be tricked into taking the effectively useless position of Foreign Office this time (I assume Ozdemir will get it): they'll probably try and grab a position like Finance (kicking Schauble aside) so they won't be cucked on their tax plans like last time ("tax cuts for everybody _{if you own a hotel}"). Maybe they'll try and get Health as well, and maybe try their luck on something to do with Asylum (you can certainly bet the Greens won't be allowed near asylum). The Greens, I presume, will go laser focused on environmental causes - the coal phase out, the diesel and petrol ban, the protection of renewable subsidies, maybe some agricultural stuff if the CDU allows it.

Schäuble is reported to become the new President of the Bundestag, thus a Free Democrat is likely to take his post as finance minister.

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The FDP wants its seats in the middle of the new Bundestag. As of yet, they always used to occupy the space on the very right.

And now it's official: Schäuble will not only become the president of the Bundestag by seniority, he is going to become the regular President of the parliament.

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The FDP wants its seats in the middle of the new Bundestag. As of yet, they always used to occupy the space on the very right.

And now it's official: Schäuble will not only become the president of the Bundestag by seniority, he is going to become the regular President of the parliament.

I thought seats were always divided in one of these 2 ways?:

Leader of the opposition on one side (so with Jamaica, SPD; after 2013 Linke), Government in the other, everyone else in the middle, ordered most conservative to most left wing

Simply most conservative to most left wing no matter if they are in government or opposition

No, the order has always been: Linke - SPD - Grüne- CDU/CSU - FDP.

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Frauke Petry has finally found another member of parliament, Mario Mieruch, to join her independent status.

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Lower Saxony:



August 10:

CDU: 40 %   
SPD: 32 %   
Greens: 9 %   
FDP: 7 %   
Left: 3 %   
AfD: 6 %

I wonder how the two elections would have influenced each other if they had taken place on the same day.

The Bundestag election results for this state are as follows:

CDU: 34.9%
SPD: 27.5%
FDP: 9.3%
AfD: 9.1%
Grüne: 8.7%
Linke: 6.9%
[PARTEI: 0.9%]

Fun fact: The 2013 Lower Saxony election was the last Landtag election to have taken place before the foundation of the AfD.

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ZDF overestimating the Greens and FDP and underestimating the AfD again.

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ZDF overestimating the Greens and FDP and underestimating the AfD again.

What do you mean exactly?

ZDF had the Greens at 8% and the FDP at 10% in their final national poll before the Bundestag election. Their respective election results were 8.9% and 10.7%.

I referred to the ARD poll.

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Well, I think the CSU leaders have been knowing from the start that this cap makes no sense and is probably unconstitutional...

How is it unconstitutional? (Not familiar with the German Constitution)

Because article 16a GG says that persons persecuted on political grounds shall have the right of asylum. No mention of a limit on how many refugees would be allowed to enter Germany. However, this article could be changed, which is however quite unlikely to happen.

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What sort of government would emerge in Lower Saxony if those are the results? I see four possibilities:

1. Grand coalition with the SPD leader as Premier
2. CDU forms a Jamaica coalition
3. SPD forms a traffic light coalition
4. SPD forms a red-red-green coalition

Definitely a traffic-light coalition.