German Elections & Politics

[palandio]

The Weidel candidacy seems to be a strategical move of Hampel, Gauland et al. They want to isolate Petry and Pretzell and to do this they need to outflank them on all sides. On the other hand they still need Höcke's troops as an infantry for internal purposes and therefore they must prevent Höcke's expulsion. But for this to work they need to pacify the anti-Höcke part of the party, which they want to achieve by promoting one of the key anti-Höcke figures. Sounds more like a plot from House of Cards and I'm not sure how it will turn out, but hey, it's the AfD.

[palandio]

Looking at the federal SPD results before 2005 and many of the more recent regional results, it is clear that the SPD always had a voter potential of over 30%. Many of these voters stayed away from the SPD because it was just too unattractive, but they were just waiting for any kind of signal to come back, at least temporarily. This in turn has made the coming election more competitive and reactivated CDU/CSU voters. And to be honest I don't see yet how the bubble is over, at least in the polls. The SPD peaked at 32% at most and is now slightly above 30%, almost 10 percentage points above the polls from the beginning of the year.

That being said I do see problems ahead for Schulz and the SPD. Schulz' involvement in the European insitutions will come under scrutiny. He will either give up on the R2G option or this option will motivate CDU voters, or both. And giving up on governing options is bad, particularly for the SPD because many of its potential voters are not willing to vote for a future junior partner in a reiterated grand coalition.
I still doubt that the SPD will be able to make this election campaign about social justice and to be seen as the main party supporting it, particularly with eurocrat Schulz at the top. I mean, they have been in government for 15 out of the last 20 years. I still fear that the SPD won't be able to communicate how measures like the minimum wage, support for single moms, earlier retirement ages for people with 45 years continuous employment and the double citizenship are useful for the society as a whole and not just handouts to particular groups. Please get me right, I'm not saying that these measures are wrong, but "for everyone we have something" is not the same as "we have one thing that is for everyone", and the SPD needs both.

[palandio]

there are not stable trends regarding the small parties atm,

you can only make out that the cdu is rising and the spd is falling, even while the cdu is rising much more than the spd is falling.

everything else is unclear and alle 4 small parties are in crisis.

Considering the instability of polling for small parties and that there's usually a 2-3% margin of error, is there a chance of all minor parties falling below the 5% threshold and having a parliament with just CDU/CSU and SPD?

<0.2% chance imho. You cannot just add up a perceived instability and a supposed 2-3% MOE for four parties in the same direction.

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The chance of both FDP and Greens falling below 5% is clearly below 10% imho.

The imminent risk for the small parties to fall below 5% in September is vastly overstated imho. AfD is not in danger because their main issue has not completely faded yet. The Greens are not in danger because they really have a hard voter core that will save them. The Left has some strategical challenges ahead (Eastern base melting, Western voters unreliable), but currently they seem safe. Only the FDP is at risk because more than any other relevant party they rely on loan voters and function as a vote bank for disaffected centrist and right-wing voters.

[palandio]

My prediction:

31.1% CDU (+0.3%)
30.0% SPD (-0.4%)
11.9% Greens (-1.3%)
11.2% FDP (+3.0%)
  6.2% AfD (+6.2%)
  3.8% SSW (-0.8%)
  3.2% Left (+0.9%)
  2.6% Others (-7.9%)

Turnout: 67.2% (+7.0%)

[palandio]

Wikipedia describes some kind of double unilateral declaration in 1955 by both the Danish and the German government to protect the German/Danish minority. I had thought that it is/was a treaty, too, but apparently it is not, at least technically.

The German party on the Danish side is active only in local politics because on a regional basis there wouldn't be enough voters to gain a seat.

It's true that the SSW is largely a Danish-funded outfit, but the main part of foreign (both Danish and German) funding seems to go to schools and cultural associations.

[palandio]

The NDR host called it the "Küsten Koalition" (the Coastal Coalition, I presume). What does that exactly refer to? Is that just because Schleswig-Holstein has a lot of coast? Or does the parties in the government do better along the coast?

The name I heard was "Küsten-Ampel" (i.e. coastal streetlights) which refers to the "Ampel" coalition (red SPD, yellow FDP, green Greens), but with the SSW instead of the FDP.
And yes, I think it is just because Schleswig-Holstein has a lot of coast.

[palandio]

Yeah, I'm really intrigued how this turns out. Kraft herself still seems to be reasonably popular, although not as much as at some point in the past. There seems to be rising discontent on some issues like security (think the Amri case), education and the social and economic development of parts of the inner Ruhr bassin (roughly north of the highway A40).

NRW is 22% of Germany (population-wise) and it contains a mix of SPD strongholds, but also rural Catholic and conservative areas, as well as urban and surban swing areas in the Rhineland, therefore you could count it as a mini-federal election and its trends can tell something about the national trend. In federal elections the NRW SPD usually overperforms the federal SPD results by ca. 6 percentage points, so as a rule of thumb you might take the SPD result in NRW and subtract 6 percentage points to get where the SPD stands federally. This is probably even generous towards the SPD because they have weak Greens and a reasonably popular incumbent governor, who is smart enough not to give an interview to a gossip magazine two weaks before the election and speak bad about his ex-wife (Albig, Schleswig-Holstein).

[palandio]

Latest NRW-poll for Sunday (YouGov for Sat1):

Linke at 8% seems quite a lot to me. If this was really true, it would be quite a breakthrough for them in the West. The normal pattern until now seems that before regional elections the Linke is polling at ca. 5% and then they get only 3% or so. Until proven incorrect I expect them not to cross the threshold, judging from the recent past. But if they do so convincingly, it would change the game considerably.

[palandio]

33.3% SPD (-5.8%)
31.0% CDU (+4.7%)
13.1% FDP (+4.5%)
  7.8% AfD (+7.8%)
  6.2% Greens (-5.1%)
  4.7% Left (+2.2%)
  1.4% Pirates (-6.4)
  2.5% Others (-1.9%)

Turnout: 65.0% (+5.4%)

Regarding the super high FDP vote: Christian Lindner in NRW and Wolfgang Kubicki in Schleswig-Holstein are the two most popular FDP politicians. The FDP has always been and is becoming even more so a low-floor high-ceiling party that can attract a lot of disaffected loosely economically liberal voters when it fields the right candidates.

[palandio]

Official turnout statistics for a sample of cities, 12:00 (grey background), for comparison numbers of 2012 elections, 2013 federal elections and 2014 local elections:

http://www.mik.nrw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Redakteure/Bilder/Themen_und_Aufgaben/Buergerbeteiligung/Wahlen/Landtagswahl_2017/15-170514-Wahlbeteiligung_mittags.pdf

[palandio]

Turnout at 16:00

http://www.mik.nrw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Redakteure/Bilder/Themen_und_Aufgaben/Buergerbeteiligung/Wahlen/Landtagswahl_2017/16-170514-Wahlbeteiligung_nachmittags-final.pdf

Turnout increase in Essen and Cologne lagging behind. Not too good for the SPD.

[palandio]

Looks good for CDU and FDP. :-( 10 minutes to go.

[palandio]

CDU 34%, maybe even CDU+FDP majority, depending on Linke <5% or >5%. Also Greens only barely over 5%.

[palandio]

No difference between FGW and infratest, except for the totally irrelevant Pirates.

[palandio]

Just wondering, the completely counted districts are all going to the CDU but in most of them the CDU gains and the SPD losses are not as big as projected. These districts don't seems to be representative of NRW as a whole, but I wonder if the swing will be so much stronger in the under-counted more urban areas of the Rhine (probably, that's a swingy region) and Ruhr (that would be new).

edit: I see that the SPD losses in the Ruhr area are huge, often >10%.

[palandio]

AfD at 15.2% in Gelsenkirchen II (that is the southern one of the two Gelsenkirchen constituencies).

Gelsenkirchen is an SPD stronghold and also one of the Ruhr area cities most affected by unemployment, child poverty, debt and Romania and Bulgaria disposing of unwanted subgroups of their population.

[palandio]

Also all four of the Düsseldorf districts are fully counted, while none of the seven Cologne districts is. (Maybe they will all come in at once?)

[palandio]

First district out of Cologne. Cologne III with DIE LINKE at 12.1%, up by 7.6%. Probably won't help them in the end, but still.

edit: Cologne III also has the highest Greens result so far, at 16.6%.

[palandio]

Depressing, yet consequential.

(Caveat: It's Forsa, but they don't seem to be too far from the consensus.)

[palandio]

So is there a chance that Merkel could actually make gains in the PV from 2013?

PV? Isn't that a bit nonsensical outside of US presidential elections?

CDU+CSU > 41.5%: Not completely outside the realm of possibilities, but not too likely in my opinion.

CDU+CSU > 18.17 million votes: Given the trend of rising turnout in all recent regional elections, which I expect to continue federally, there is definitely a chance, although it is <50% in my opinion.

[palandio]

I think that a bit of strategical speculation is legitimate, given that Schwesig is often thought to hold some long-term federal ambitions.

Being minister for Family, Women and Youth Affairs (1991-1994) has been the first step in Angela Merkel's long way towards chancellorship. But at the same time broadening Schwesig's political profile seems to be important, particularly for a good-looking blonde woman. That's also one of the reasons why Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) wanted the Defence portfolio. Particularly when looking at the SPD the governors have for a long time been a natural reservoir for party chairmen and chancellor candidates.

Hence not a bad move for Schwesig.

[palandio]

Bavaria is the single most pro-CDU/CSU state in the country, I think. I expect Merkel to be up bigly there.

Correct. It should be noted though that Merkel's CDU doesn't run in Bavaria and that the CSU under many aspects acts as a separate party. From autumn 2015 on there had been quite some frictions between CSU (chairman/governor Seehofer in particular) and CDU (Merkel in particular), mostly over immigration policy. The poll shows that most CSU voters have effectively reconciled with Merkel.

[palandio]

A new federal election poll for Rheinland-Pfalz also shows devastating losses for the SPD compared with 2013, just like the 3 polls from the Eastern states above:



[...]

If these recent results are accurate, the CDU could actually improve on their 2013 numbers Germany-wide, while the SPD could get an even lower result ...

These changes are not with respect to 2013 though. In 2013 Rheinland-Pfalz had
CDU 43.3%
SPD 27.5%
Greens 7.6%
FDP 5.5%
Linke 5.4%
AfD 4.8%
Others 5.9%

Hence the changes would be
CDU +0.7
SPD -3.5
Greens -1.6
FDP +4.5
Linke +0.6
AfD +2.2
Others -2.9

So the changes from the already weak 2013 result are negative for the SPD, but nothing like -13 percentage points.

[palandio]

Schulz really lacks some basic political instincts. If he brings up an issue he should be able to say something slightly more precise and realistic than a para-phrased "We should take in refugees and force them down Poland's throat." This guy can't really disappoint me anymore, but he is constantly doing his best to do so.

[palandio]

[...]

What jumped out at me was the forecast 2nd place finishes for the AfD in 6 seats in the southwest state of Saxony mostly surrounding the Dresden region. OTOH, Die Linke seems to be the default 2nd place position in most other eastern German states along with the SPD.

And that begs the question. Why are AfD 2nd place positions all concentrated in Saxony and why AfD instead of Die Linke as elsewhere?

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

A scientific study (Kern, Hainmueller, 2009) based on Stasi protocols states that not having access to Western information and entertainment (due to geographical distance) made people in Eastern Saxony and the German part of Pomerania less content with socialism. If you look on political maps these regions are the ones where CDU (and now also AfD) are particularly strong and Linke and SPD are particularly weak.