German Elections & Politics

[palandio]

SPD + Greens +Linke are now pretty reliably polling in the 40-42% region, which is still a pretty undeniable move on the combined 38.5% they got in September. Amid all the talk about the AFD surge, that seems to be worth pointing out

SPD + Greens + Linke have been polling over 40% for most of the last 14 months.

[Tender Branson]

Talk about a surge for The Greens (relative to their '17 election results). I assume the growth in their numbers is primarily at the expense of the SPD? Is there a legitimate chance that The Greens eclipse the SPD during the next federal election, thereby making the three largest parties the CSU, Afd, and Grüne?

That's a common mistake: The Greens mostly gain from the CDU/CSU's more liberal wings, not from the SPD. The AfD gains from the SPD.

[RedPrometheus]

The consulting group pollytix did a poll for the SPD Bremen:

CDU: 24%
SPD: 28%
Greens: 14%
FDP: 10%
Linke: 14%
AfD: 8%
Others: 2%

http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/landtage/bremen.htm

I know that they did some good work in Lower Saxony but I'm not all that impressed with their work on the federal level so I would take this poll with a significant grain of salt.

[palandio]

Talk about a surge for The Greens (relative to their '17 election results). I assume the growth in their numbers is primarily at the expense of the SPD? Is there a legitimate chance that The Greens eclipse the SPD during the next federal election, thereby making the three largest parties the CSU, Afd, and Grüne?

That's a common mistake: The Greens mostly gain from the CDU/CSU's more liberal wings, not from the SPD. The AfD gains from the SPD.

Neither interpretation is wrong. Voters from both CDU/CSU and SPD are going towards both AfD and the Greens, reflecting the strengthening nationalist vs. internationalist cleavage, because these two parties are ones that have the clearest position.

[Beezer]

[President Johnson]

The times that CDU and SPD are the leading parties is over. We're going to have a lot more instability on the federal and state level.

I wish there would be a party similar to Macron's En-Marche emerging as leading political force.

[Former President tack50]

Honesly I feel that if you want a 2 party system nowadays, you must switch to FPTP.

The era of SPD-CDU 2 party system in Germany is over. Both PS and UMP in France are dead or on life support (particularly PS). PSOE-PP barely manage to get 55% of the vote nowadays. In Italy both FI and PD have fallen a lot.

If Merkel wants to secure a future for CDU and SPD, she should switch to FPTP. Or better yet, switch to a 2 round system like France's legislatives (which would make it even easier for centrist parties to keep winning).

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

That was looming for a long time but there are info that Wagenknecht soon will announce creation of her new political movement. Organisation will be called Aufstehen and as far as I know as for now founders do not want it to be new party but rather political organisation for members of various left-wing organisation. The plot-twist is that organisation is going to be anti-imigrant, obviously to fight with AfD in former DDR terrains.

[DavidB.]

Skeptical about this. The German left-wing seems, for obvious historical reasons, to be more "intersectionalist" (by the lack of a better word) than many of its counterparts in Western Europe.

[palandio]

Yes, it is likely that Wagenknecht and her supporters won't be able to steer Linke, SPD and Greens in the direction they want. And then what? The next logical step would be to transform Aufstehen into a political party and run for elections on their own. (German law is quite strict about admitting only proper parties to elections and would not tolerate many of the shenanigans occurring in France, the Netherlands and other countries.)

[Former President tack50]

Does she have a chance of getting above the 5% threshold in any state elections? (or alternatively get enough direct mandates, but I guess that's even harder than 5%+)

Wagenknecht's proposal sounds really interesting to me.

[palandio]

Two weeks ago a poll by Emnid, commissioned by the Focus news magazine, found out that 34% can immagine voting for a "Sahra Wagenknecht list", including 87% of Linke voters, 53% of Green voters and 37% of SPD voters.

We all know that polls like this are not to be taken at face value. What I think is true is that:
- There is potential for "charismatic" left of center politics. (cf. the Martin Schulz hype)
- There is potential for an SPD that takes distance from parts of its former reformist agenda.
- There is potential for left-wing nationalism.
The challenge for Wagenknecht and her allies is to bring all of this together, to persist in the public discussion and to succeed on the electoral market. That will be really difficult. Additionally this project has a massive potential to attract conspiracy theorists, radical "Israel critics" and various other unappetizing folks who would eventually completely derail the whole thing.

[EPG]

So scaled to vote intention, the base of consider-ers is roughly equal numbers of Linke-Green-SPD voters.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

In the meantime, the German Charlie Baker, Schleswig-Holstein Governor Daniel Günther, suggested his party collaborate with the Left, at least in the East. Of course, his proposal caused immediate indignation and many party members of his snubbed it disgust. Only some eastern Christian Democrats are not averse to approching their former fiends; the CDU party leader of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Vincent Kokert cautioned against a demonization of the Left in the East; at municipal level both parties had been having a long history of successful cooperation, plus most of the Left Party members didn't want to do any harm to Germany anymore, he said. His Brandenburgian confrère also pressed for a discussion culture that excludes opponents.



a picture of Governor Günther

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

I wonder what will happen if this is the result of the Saxony election next fall:

AfD: 30%
CDU: 28%
Linke: 20%
Blaue: 6%
Grüne: 4.9%
SPD: 4.8%
FDP: 4.7%

In that - indeed realistic - scenario, the CDU would be forced to form a coalition with the Left.
(If those result come true, the AfD would become the only party represented in each state legislature.)

[Tender Branson]

Chancellor Kurz was recently invited to a CDU-meeting in Thüringen, by the state-CDU leader there - Mike Ohrring.



The CDU is the strongest party there right now ahead of state elections and - theoretically - a coalition with the AfD is possible (49% vs. 44%) , to remove the current leftist government.

At the meeting, where more than 5.000 CDU guests were present, Kurz talked about improving the border protection in Southern Europe by strengthening Frontex and to bring rescued migrants immediately back to Africa, instead of bringing them to Europe - which is further away.

Kurz also argued against a CDU-AfD coalition in Thüringen, because the AfD is not comparable with the FPÖ and more unstable.



A crowd of 50 people were protesting outside.

http://www.heute.at/politik/news/story/Sebastian-Kurz-bei-CDU-Jahrenempfang-in-Erfurt-Mike-Mohring-Thueringen-Koalition-mit-AfD-sei-nicht-ratsam-44627339

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article181286380/Oesterreichs-Kanzler-Kurz-Wir-erleben-jetzt-dass-sich-weniger-Menschen-auf-den-Weg-machen.html

[President Johnson]

I wonder what will happen if this is the result of the Saxony election next fall:

AfD: 30%
CDU: 28%
Linke: 20%
Blaue: 6%
Grüne: 4.9%
SPD: 4.8%
FDP: 4.7%

In that - indeed realistic - scenario, the CDU would be forced to form a coalition with the Left.
(If those result come true, the AfD would become the only party represented in each state legislature.)

There would be no coalition agreement and new elections be called. I just don't see it. The Left or AfD may tolerate a CDU minority government that quickly fails as soon as a budget has to be passed, again leading to new elections.

Btw, you even don't need all of them (SPD, Greens, FDP) out of the legislature, it gets complicated if the AfD and the Left have a majority. It almost happend in Magdeburg in 2016.

[TheSaint250]

Are Blaue even projected to get into the Saxon parliament?

[Former President tack50]

I wonder what will happen if this is the result of the Saxony election next fall:

AfD: 30%
CDU: 28%
Linke: 20%
Blaue: 6%
Grüne: 4.9%
SPD: 4.8%
FDP: 4.7%

In that - indeed realistic - scenario, the CDU would be forced to form a coalition with the Left.
(If those result come true, the AfD would become the only party represented in each state legislature.)

There would be no coalition agreement and new elections be called. I just don't see it. The Left or AfD may tolerate a CDU minority government that quickly fails as soon as a budget has to be passed, again leading to new elections.

Btw, you even don't need all of them (SPD, Greens, FDP) out of the legislature, it gets complicated if the AfD and the Left have a majority. It almost happend in Magdeburg in 2016.

I'm now wondering, are there any town halls or any other kind of local government in Germany where there's already a "negative majority"? (ie AfD+Linke over 50%) And what has happened in those cases?

I guess there must be some random village in former East Germany with a town hall like that.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Are Blaue even projected to get into the Saxon parliament?

Not yet. But Petry can account herself lucky that the European elections, which don't require any threshold, will be held four months earlier. A respectable result (3% and higher) would give her party a boost in the polls.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Btw, you even don't need all of them (SPD, Greens, FDP) out of the legislature, it gets complicated if the AfD and the Left have a majority. It almost happend in Magdeburg in 2016.

I've posted this chart before. It shows that none of the common coalitions would work in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, if the Bundestag election results were state election results.

[President Johnson]

Btw, you even don't need all of them (SPD, Greens, FDP) out of the legislature, it gets complicated if the AfD and the Left have a majority. It almost happend in Magdeburg in 2016.

I've posted this chart before. It shows that none of the common coalitions would work in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, if the Bundestag election results were state election results.

Well, just like in the US, state elections are not federal elections. The Greens would never come close to 30% in my homestate of Baden-Württemberg in federal election. It was the Kretschmann-effect. Same in Lower Saxony, the SPD, in a national election, can't reach the 37% they received in the 2017 state election.

I hope the splitting trend stops at one time and gets reversed; too many parties is just counterproductive for effective government. I don't want to be like the Netherlands or Israel in this regard. A stable four party system (SPD, CDU, FDP and Greens) was much better and more stable. The best would be a two party system with a center-right and a center-left party.

[Former President tack50]

Well, hypothetically a Germany with FPTP (298 seats) would have had a massive CDU/CSU majority and everyone else basically irrelevant:

CDU/CSU: 231
SPD: 59
Linke: 5
AfD: 3
Greens: 1
FDP: 0

Then again it might not be a bad idea at all to switch Germany to FPTP. Or better yet, to a 2 round system like France.

Looking back at previous results, 2005 would have been a nailbiter, with CDU/CSU at exactly 150/298 seats. Another interesting result is that technically in 1994 SPD wins the popular vote but gets less seats than CDU (of course the joint CDU/CSU get more votes than SPD).

1980 would have been another nailbiter (SPD 127, Union 121). Not only that but the Union actually wins the popular vote! Then again 1976 would have seen a Union victory instead of Chancellor Schmidt. In 1969 again the Union wins the popular vote but SPD wins more seats (SPD 127, Union 121 again).

The only hung parliament would have been the very first (1949), though even then the parties that actually formed the government (Union+FDP+DP) do add up to a majority (you could even get rid of DP)

[Intell]

#fk democracy amrite.

[DavidB.]

Well, hypothetically a Germany with FPTP (298 seats) would have had a massive CDU/CSU majority and everyone else basically irrelevant

Well no, because FPTP makes people vote differently.