German Elections & Politics

[Middle-aged Europe]

The results of the SPD "primary" election to determine the successor of retiring Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit have been announced:
Michael Müller, state minister for urban development - 59.1%

Müller was - as far as I know - the most serious/boring candidate, under normal circumstances he would have had no chance, an Anti-Wowereit-vote!

While having a different persona and image, Müller is also known as a close Wowereit protége. So, it's doubtful to which extent it can be really seen as an "anti-Wowereit vote".

The anti-Wowereit candidate in this race was Jan Stöß who's a long-standing Wowereit/Müller rival and had in fact ousted Wowereit's man Müller as state party chairman two years ago in a close ballot.

[solarstorm]

I think this is the best result one could imagine.
Now those three form a genuine trio: mayor - party leader - faction leader.
Congratulations to the last Social Democratic Berlin Mayor in a long time...

[Tender Branson]

Apparently, the Red-Red-Green coalition talks in Thüringen are almost completed.

They plan to present the coalition contract on Thursday.

Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) to be elected Governor by the new state parliament on Dec. 5

[Franzl]

Yep, the Linke led red-red-green coalition is happening.

[Middle-aged Europe]

And here's a map of Germany for our English-speaking friends :

[Cranberry]

Butt ann weird ham björk! Hahaha, that one's great!

[palandio]

Interesting findings. Keep in mind that the numbers depend on the questions they asked and how many you had to get right to become a xenophobe/antisemite. Comparisons between parties and general tendencies in time are a bit more robust, though also the former depend on the questions.

P.S.: My own English is not impeccable and I do not like being a grammar nazi, but the way you are using the word therefor is not only incorrect, but also highly deceptive. Please use something like instead instead.

[Hifly]

I have absolutely no idea what the results of that poll mean; you've presented it in a completely meaningless way.

[swl]

[Tender Branson]

Not that I doubt the results, but n=17 for the NPD (or other small parties) is frankly a joke.

If they wanted to do a legitimate survey, they should have used an oversample for small parties (for example n=500 for all parties).

[Tender Branson]

http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm

Currently, the FDP averages about 3% in the federal polls.

The funny thing:

1 major pollster (ZDF's Forschungsgruppe Wahlen) is putting the FDP into the "other" category, unlike other pollsters who still publish separate FDP numbers.

IIRC, the FDP has even sued ZDF/FGW because of this.

[Yeahsayyeah]

The election of the Thuringian Ministerpräsident (Prime minister) will be today. Red-red-green has a majority of just one seat, so it will be interesting, if there are any defections. Expect some constitutional and procedural shenanigans, if defections occur:

There would be three rounds of voting. In the first two rounds an absolute majority of all representatives would be needed. In the third round, the Thuringian state constitution (article 70) states, that the candidate with the most votes is elected. The CDU (and especially the new Landtag president Carius (CDU)) have been presenting creative interpretations of the constituion, the last days: They state, there had to be the possibility of explicitly voting "no", if there is only one contender in the third round because the Landtag rules of procedure say so and Ramelow could not be elected, if there were more "no" than "yes" votes.

Well, the constitution tells otherwise and there is some precedent from Schleswig-Holstein in the fifties, where an election of a minority PM occured under similar rules as the Thuringian constitution has. This also has an equivalent in the Grundgesetz (constitution) of Germany, as the Bundespräsident is allowed (but not has to) to appoint a chancellor that has got the most votes in the third round of voting, but not an outright majority.
 But of course, the Landtag's rules of procedure and the CDU's whish to block the election of the Left Party politician Ramelow are more important than the constitution. ;-)


The session is supposed to begin 10 o'clock am CET. MDR will broadcast the election.
http://www.mdr.de/mediathek/livestreams/fernsehen/livestream-mdr-plus100.html

[Franzl]

Only 45.

Ramelow fails to win in first round.

[Tender Branson]

Only 45.

Ramelow fails to win in first round.

[Beezer]

And he's been elected...

[Franzl]

Ramelow (Linke) has been elected Ministerpräsident of Thüringen in a Linke/SPD/Green coalition.

[Tender Branson]

Interesting new poll out of Germany by one of the main pollsters:

What do you think ? Should Germany accept the Krim-Anschluss (annexation) to Russia as a fact and also legally accept it ?



By party:



Do you see Putin's current foreign policy as a threat to Germany or not ?



By party:

[Middle-aged Europe]

Chart 3 doesn't seem to make much sense with regards to Chart 1.

So both West Germans and East Germans consider Putin as a threat to Germany, but East Germans nevertheless support recognizing the annexation of Crimea, while West Germans don't. Do East Germans think that recognizing the annexation would appease Putin and hence make him less of a threat?

The pro-Russian stance of the AfD is interesting, but not entirely surprising either. I think there's usually strong correlation between between the AfD folk and the "don't believe what the mainstream media is telling us (for instance with regards to Ukraine)!" crowd. AfD voters = conspiracy theorists.

It's also fitting that SPIEGEL ONLINE was reporting today that top AfD people are planning to go to the Russian embassy in Berlin for "consultations".

[C9xV63H5]

In Bavaria (=Bayern state), neo-nazis burned 3 future asyl houses and put Hakenkreuze on the houses walls.

That is so terrible! But nobody was inside, the houses are not open. But still big damage.

I cannot post links of this story it says, must post 20 artciles first. Foto is not working too.

[freefair]

Putin's coalition of the sympathetic fringes at it again (nationalists & radical leftist) . I'm sure if the rump FDP voters had been polled they'd have been even more against Putin, being the centre party & all.

[Tender Branson]

Hamburg will vote in about 2 months and there is a new major poll out by Infratest dimap:



The SPD remains dominant, but loses the absolute majority. The Left is pretty strong there for a West-German state. AfD is currently not in (5% threshold), but tends to underpoll. FDP is out.

Voters prefer a SPD-Green coalition, if the SPD indeed ends up losing it:



In the direct vote for Mayor, Scholz (SPD) easily beats the CDU guy:



Scholz also has the best job approval ratings:

[sirius3100]

mafo.de also made a poll for the Hamburger Morgenpost:

SPD: 42%
CDU: 22%
Grüne: 14%
Linke: 8%
AFD: 6%
Neue Liberale: 3%
FDP: 2%
Others: 3%


I'm very happy about the result of the Neue Liberale (New Liberals) in this poll. I hoped that they would get 1% in the actual election, and thus secure public funding. But now there seems to be a real chance that they could get above the 5% threshold. It's the first time that they have been mentioned in a poll, and in the past that and the then increased media coverage sometimes lead to considerable momentum.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

So the Neue Liberals are social liberals eh? Well good luck to them, but I do wonder whether the niche they want to fill is already occupied by the Greens...

[Sozialliberal]

That '70s Party

The party Neue Liberale (New Liberal) was founded last September. The initiators were members of the FDP state party of Hamburg who were annoyed at the quarrels within the state party. Besides the FDP, large shares of the New Liberal founding members came also from the Greens, the Pirates and the SPD.

The New Liberal seeks to revive the spirit of the 1970s FDP. They view the decade as "a time when politics was still passionate and progressive, and liberals were regarded as respectable and education-oriented individualists". In contrast to today's FDP, the New Liberals speak a lot about "fighting social injustice". However, it should be noted that Sylvia Canel, one of the two federal chairpeople of the New Liberal, was a member of the economic liberal FDP tendency "Liberaler Aufbruch".

Back in the 1970s, the FDP adopted social liberalism as its party ideology, and formed coalitions with the SPD. However in 1982, the FDP economics minister Lambsdorff handed in a policy paper, which was inspired by Thatcher and Reagan. That was seen as a clear sign of the decline of the social liberal current within the FDP.

The FDP social liberals didn't agree on a joint proceeding after the realignment of their party. Some switched to the SPD (e.g. Günter Verheugen, Ingrid Matthäus-Maier). Some remained in the FDP (e.g. Gerhart Baum, Burkhard Hirsch). Some tried to establish a new party, the Liberal Democrats (Liberale Demokraten), which exists to this day but has never won seats in an election above the district or municipal level. Some left the FDP without joining another party (e.g. Helga Schuchardt). That led to the fragmentation of social liberalism in Germany.

Hamburg should be a good place for a social liberal party for several reasons (urban, university city, centre of trade and commerce, long history of the citizenry). The Hamburg New Liberals chose Isabel Wiest (aged 38, formerly Greens) and Christian Schiller (aged 29, formerly FDP) as their top candidates.

So the Neue Liberals are social liberals eh? Well good luck to them, but I do wonder whether the niche they want to fill is already occupied by the Greens...

It is disputed how liberal the Greens actually are. Some see them as know-alls who want to stipulate how people should live their lives, whereas liberals value freedom of choice. However, the Greens have been talking more about liberty since the FDP ceased to be represented in the Bundestag.

[Tender Branson]

Hamburg will have a state election in 5 weeks.

13 parties are running:

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Green = already in the state parliament