German Elections & Politics

[mubar]

Guess that last week's increase in SPD support after the decisive 'yes' to GroKo was so substantial that even INSA couldn't continue with their "sinking Sozis" narrative anymore.

Anyway, one of the most positive polling numbers recently was Emnid's weekly poll on Saturday that had SPD up 3 points and AfD down 2 at the same time. Both now close to their election result again. So voters' reaction seems to support SPD's government participation.

[mubar]

Angela Merkel is elected Chancellor in the first round of voting in Bundestag today. She got 364 votes, which is more than the required majority 355 of 709 seats, but less than the 399 seats that Union and SPD have together.

More exactly, even though there's 709 members in the Bundestag, only 692 actually voted today. Of those votes 4 were declared invalid, so Merkel received 364 of the 688 valid votes. There were 9 blanks and 315 against.

Technically that means 35 SPD or Union members didn't vote for the government, which is quite a lot as the GroKo doesn't have too big a majority in this Bundestag. (Theoretically it's of course also possible that some Green or FDP members could have voted for Merkel, in which case there would be even more SPD/Union dissenters). There will certainly be a lot of speculation about which politicians didn't vote 'yes' and how those are going to behave from now on.

However it's also worth remembering that the previous grand coalitions in Germany have never received unanimous support of their parliament groups in the chancellor vote either, yet despite this initial reluctance, they all have been able to stand the full period until the next regular election. So this isn't necessarily an issue going forward.