2011 State Elections in Germany

[Insula Dei]

More or less static compared to the Allensbach one. What are you comparing it to?

[Insula Dei]

Wow, you really, really live in Mitte. Is it a good place to live?

[off-topic]

[Insula Dei]

A major newspaper dedicated some pages to the 'crucial year for Angela Merkel's coalition' and said that appart from the obvious implications in the Bundesrat it would also be vital in the run-up to next year's Federal election. How difficult can it be to fact-check something that big??

[Insula Dei]

Interesting how well the Left does, despite the fact that Left frontrunner Wulf Gallert has horrible personal ratings compared with the frontrunners of the CDU and SPD.

I imagine that he only has a positive perception with his own voters and terrible ratings with everyone else, so Die Linke's result will probably not be affected by this. Am I right?

[Insula Dei]

The Whal-O-Mat mentions a 'Noordstaat'. Is that seriously being considered or is it on the level of a United Kingdom of the Netherlands?

[Insula Dei]

I turned on ZDF earlier today and couldn't believe the figures  in the lower half of the screen were actual results. Turns out I underestimated how good an election this was going to be.

[Insula Dei]

OK that's official. I'm predicting black-yellow in B-W

Appart from the smiley, I'm inclined to agree.

[Insula Dei]

So B-W comes down to whether or not the FDP makes it into the Landstag?

[Insula Dei]

To look at it from the bright side: unless I'm mistaken this is a +11 gain for the Red-Greens against -6 for the CDU-FDP. So the National Government Coalition lost seats while the total numbers of seats increased. In percentage points it's even clearer: +3,4 vs. -6,6. That's trending in the right direction, I'd say.

[/hackery about a subject I know next to nothing about]

[Insula Dei]

That makes sense.  Although on the question of bailouts, what choice do they have.  Since they share the same currency, if they didn't bail them out this would cause the Euro to plunge.  The only option would be to withdraw from the Euro and reinstate the Deutsche Mark, however EU rules prohibit withdrawing from the Euro so the only way they could do this is to withdraw from the EU outright which I have a tough time believing many Germans favour this.  A referendum to withdraw from the EU might pass in Britain but not Germany.

I'm not an expert but I don't think the Eurozone prohibits leaving the Euro, there's just no provision to do so. Germany leaving the EU is of course impossible  even more so than Greece or Italy leaving the Eurozone, as the rapid adoption of the Euro after 1990 was at least in part an attempt to make Germany have firm roots in the European Community.

[Insula Dei]

I agree, it totally needs both the SPD and Die Linke to be in its next government.

[Insula Dei]

Actually, I could live with Joschka Fischer, Chancellor of the BRD, and Özdemir could be used against Phil in the Misssile Shield thread, even if it would be pretty awfull that the SPD would come in behind the Greens, for whom I have little love beyond their role as junior partners in Socialist-led coalitions.

[Insula Dei]

Here´s another reason why the Left will get decimated in the coming state elections:

Germany's former communists hail Castro in birthday letter

The German Left Party hailed Fidel Castro and his socialist model in a letter sent to the Cuban leader to mark his 85th birthday, media reported on Saturday.

"You can look back proudly on your life of battles and successful action at the head of the Cuban revolution," Gesine Loetzsch and Klaus Ernst, leaders of the party which unites former communists of the defunct East Germany and leftists from the West, wrote in the letter.

"Under your direction, Cuba has remained faithful to its ideals and led a new social development ... Cuba was and is, for these reasons, a model and a reference point for many nations across the world," they said in the letter reproduced by the popular daily Bild and heavily criticised by rival parties.

"These people dream more about socialism than human rights or democracy, they have never distanced themselves from the worn-out concepts of the GDR," the official name of former East Germany, Elmar Brok of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union told Bild.

Fidel Castro, who handed power over to his brother Raul five years ago, celebrated his 85th birthday on August 13.

As Germany marked 50 years since the construction of the Berlin Wall last week, a Left Party youth magazine gave thanks on its front page to East Germany for having built what East Berlin then called the "anti-fascist protection wall" and "protecting peace in Europe".

http://www.expatica.com/de/news/german-news/germany-s-former-communists-hail-castro-in-birthday-letter_170509.html

You think that's some serious stuff? Steve Stevaert and parts of the social-democratic sp.a-elite are Fidel Castro's BFFs in Western Europe.

I remember a behind the screens documentary about Stevaert's 2004 campaign where they showed him playing host to the Cuban foreign minister. At the goodbye party, Stevaert's moronic assistant, who had been demonstrating his horrible incompetence troughout the documentary, offered the Cuban a present, quipping that they had wanted to buy him a FN (Liegeois weapons manufacturer) rifle 'because even Fidel knows that there could have been no Cuban revolution without these'. The whole room was staring in silent disbelief at the guy.

Steve also visits Cuba regularily, is a personal friend of the Castros and he and his friend Chokri Mahassine are  planning on organising the first music festival with western musicians since the 1950s in Cuba. (:or were doing so, as I don't know whether Chokri is still into the whole music festival organising thing after last week)

Keep in mind that these are mostly quite centrist people from the right-wing of one of the most moderate social-democratic parties in Europe. It just so happens they have good relations with the Cuban regime (, which is hardly as bad as some of you seem to think it is, in terms of dictatorships).

[Insula Dei]

Lolwut.

The Polish government wants to build a nuclear power plant.

That'd explain what was the occasion for this poster, not why its worldview is so comically warped.

[Insula Dei]

Those S-H numbers are pretty damning. What's the absolute minimum number of states the FDP may have representation in by the next Bundeswahl?

[Insula Dei]

Good to see that disappointing Social Democratic politicians haven't disappeared from the world.

[Insula Dei]

There's another poll out today for NRW by Infratest dimap:

35% SPD
31% CDU
16% Greens
  7% Pirates
  4% Left
  3% FDP
  4% Others

51-38 majority for the SPD-Green government.

...

There's also a new Sachsen poll by IfM Leipzig:

44% [+4] CDU 
17%  [-4] Left
12% [+2] SPD
11% [+5] Greens
  8% [+6] Pirates
  3%  [-3] NPD
  2%  [-8] FDP
  3%  [-2]Others

The current CDU-FDP government would be voted out.

When is the next Sachsen State election?

And, while I'm sure this would result in a boring example of Schwarz-Rot or Schwarz-Grün, just imagine a four-party coalition with the Pirates and with the largest party being at 17%. That's the sort of madness even Benelux coalitions don't give you.