2011 State Elections in Germany

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What about Schleswig-Holstein ?

Will they vote in 2011 or 2012 now after the court ruling ?

(At least Germany provides an interesting election year 2011, there are almost no good elections anywhere elese in the world next year, maybe Italy ...)

September 2012 at the latest.

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First post-coalition breakup poll for Hamburg (FGW):

SPD 41%
CDU 22%
Greens 21%
Left 7%
FDP 4%
Others 5%

Non-depressing election alert?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Haha, wow.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Naturally maps must be made. Anyone with links with detailed results? (or where such wondrous things shall appear?)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just started making a set of Hamburg maps; will incorporate Shilly's pretty map of pretty into it so it compares better with the ones done of 2008 and 2009.

It will be the first set to include the Pirate Party. What colour should they get?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For cheap laughter, compare with 2008 or with the 2009 Federal Election.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Calm and all that. Fluffy bunnies.

Edit: some posts have been moved into a new thread in international general.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I understand that it's an issue that many feel strongly about, but if we could please keep the nuclear discussion the IGD board?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I understand that it's an issue that many feel strongly about, but if we could please keep the nuclear discussion the IGD board?

That will probably not be possible, because nuclear energy is an integral part of this state election.

In very general terms yes, but my remark was not general.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't think the CDU/FDP have anyone to blame but themselves for this. lol.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would suggest that it's actually an urban myth.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But perhaps the more interesting - and more novel - line of thought is, when the Greens successfully take the SPD's place in Grand Coalitions, where does that leave the SPD? What are its options, besides hoping for a breakdown in CDU-Green relations? What does it stand for? How does it campaign? If the Left weren't firmly established yet, it might try to, as it were, be the Left, but now even that's not going to work - people would find the original more credible.
The Frankfurt situation leaves the SPD in a horrible trap, only partly of its own making. Its continued failures are not solely the result of the local SPD's undeniable incompetence.

Unless local politics is very different in Hesse than over here, the short-term answer is fairly obvious; shameless populist oppositionalism

Maybe it's 'just' a recent manifestation of a long term problem; something I read recently noted that while (as extreme examples) Labour and the SPÖ could/did blame electoral decline in the 1980s on the changing composition/structure of the working class (and the problem of adjusting to this), the tendency in the SPD was to worry about the changing composition/structure of big cities (and the problem of adjusting to this). Actually it may not be directly relevant at all, but it's interesting anyway.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think I covered that - "if the Left weren't..."

LOL

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I might have some of that stuff (an interview or something) lurking around somewhere. I could go looking for it, rather than doing something productive (not that I'll do much of the latter today anyway; not well).

What's interesting though - although I suspect that this isn't more than slightly relevant to Frankfurt - is that they were able to win Hamburg in the old style (or something that looks close enough to it as makes no difference). Special circumstances, of course, but that's not the point; if certain popular theories about social change and electoral patterns are correct then that shouldn't have been possible (no exaggeration). Which links, vaguely, into something I've thought for a while; social and economic change is often used as an excuse for poor election results for social democratic parties, when the real issue (while related) is a little different.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Maps going quite well. I was tempted to troll and declare that no party under 5% should be included, but decided to include the two largest fringe parties as at least they were over 3%.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Slightly too late for that idea...



...still, I might do something about the situation later.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, yeah. It's clearly way to early to say much at all. So all hypotheticals based on polls at this stage (by whichever company) are a little pointless. But I have one anyway; what would happen if the FDP did fall below the magic number? It's not as though they actually stand for 'owt.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How is Merkel not being a conservative? Maybe she's more of a Heath than a Thatcher (say), but that's not the same as...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Angela Merkel doesn't believe anything.

Thus she is a conservative.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bremen was always a left-wing stronghold anyway; SPD have run it since the return to democracy and have - unless I'm misremembering something - led there in every single federal election from 1949 onwards. It's a big industrial port, ffs.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well the Greens overtaking the SDP is a good thing at least.

They've been ahead in Forsa polls for a while now.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Social Democratic Labour parties are having a horrible time all over Europe,

It's certainly true that the past few years have been bad for almost all such parties, but it's a little questionable to use the present tense; you have to select recent General Election results from these countries, and polling/lower level election results from those. Which is a questionable way of doing things.

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Again, inaccurate tense. The fragmentation of the traditional industrial working class (and the subsequent declines in the membership - and power - of Trade Unions and other forms of working class political power) was yesterdays phenomenon; mostly a creature of the 1980s (a little earlier in some places, a little later in others stretching into the 1990s... but that's always the way). You can't use it to explain recent electoral trends or to forecast the future.

Of course the relationship between that trend and electoral patterns at the time it happened was not as clear cut as conventionally assumed. The only countries where there was a clear and undeniable link (and even then it didn't tell the whole story, or even close to it) were Britain and Austria.

In case, just because the working class has changed radically over the past thirty years doesn't mean that there is no longer such a thing (quite the contrary) or that there is no longer a place for a political movement that represents its interests (however defined). The fundamental problem that those at the top of most social democratic parties forgot how to do that, which is related in most countries to the structural economic changes of the past forty years. I make no predictions as to whether this situation will change.

There are additional issues in Germany; I think I've mentioned most of them before. I'd try writing stuff up, but it's already nearly half three, so probably not a good idea. It's interesting, though, to note that electoral politics in Germany has returned to the fragmented state that was the norm before the rise of the Nazis (this is hardly an original or particularly insightful observation), so it's possible that what we've seen over the past decade (and who knows what else we'll see?) is an example of something quite unrelated to wider European patterns.

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It's not so very long ago that it was common to muse on the possibility of Conservatism dying as a political movement across Western Europe. You then have the famous examples of all the immediately-wrong predictions made after the Berlin Wall fell. Longterm predictions are almost always wrong, which is why I stopped making them - with a few exceptions - a while ago.

Saying that, one political movement that does seem to be nearing death's door (at least as a powerful force) is Christian Democracy. I think I've written that before as well. And it was hardly original then. But it's gone, or going, even if some of the parties survive as major players (as has already been seen with the CDU; which is mostly just a Conservative Party now). Which is hardly a surprise; what's the point now that the Cold War is over and European Communism six feet under itself?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Let's also not forget that Fukishima-style accidents don't happen very often, let alone conveniently before an election.

They don't, but the BaWü Greens were polling very strongly even before the disaster in Japan. Now a lot of that was (widely presumed) to have been because of another issue on which the Greens had taken a strong stand, but that's the way that politics works - especially at a regional or local level.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wowereit is currently saying that he does not want to be the Chancellor candidate, and wants to, if re-elected as mayor, serve out his full term. 

Of course he has to say it. The fact that he could be available for only a half a term could hurt him in the election, after all. It's a different matter once the election is over...

'After many of my friends approached me, I have...'

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As far as I know the most recent poll was in April: SPD 34, CDU 27, Left 20, Green 10, FDP 3, Nazis 3

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Details, details.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Electoral suicide is a remarkable thing.

I have neverbunderstood why Sachsen has been such a rightwing stronghold in post-reunification Germany. I believe it was a very leftwing area before Hitler and Liepzig and Dresden were socialist citadels. Why is this state such an outlier from the rest of the ex-DDR?

Over five decades of dictatorship does tend to change places, especially when one of them was as long-lasting and as thorough (for want of a better word) as the DDR. SPD strength in Saxony was based initially on hostility to the state's incorporation into the Prussian-led Empire as much as it was on class tension (even if early SPD strongholds in Saxony tending to be smaller industrial centres and rural-industrial areas does fit the usual pattern of early socialist success perfectly). The left was actually stronger there under the Kaiserreich than during Weimar. Later on, SPD strength was based on the remarkably deep organisation it managed to build in parts of Saxony; it's hard not to notice that the places there that kept giving high percentages to the SPD right up until the end (like Leipzig, but also some smaller towns like Freital) were the places where the SPD basically ran its own welfare state, while the places where the SPD collapsed (notably the Erzgebirge and the Vogtland) were places where there was little in the way of SPD organisation, and hadn't been much even during the years when they'd polled strongly there. A surprising amount of the SPD tradition managed to survive the Gestapo, but not the Stasi. Basically.

Also, you know, voting patterns in large parts of the ex-DDR are still shaped by who was in control early on. That's one reason why the SPD is quite strong in Brandenburg.