German Federal Election - Sept. 24 - Results Thread

[Former President tack50]

The SPD still is 3.5 times as big as our social democratic party, it can always be worse

On the other hand the SPD is roughly tied with our social democratic party, and I though that ours was already close to dying.

Also, surprisingly the German results aren't that far off from our 2016 results. Except for the fact that we don't have a far right here.

[Former President tack50]

East Germany forecast:

Yikes! RIP East German SPD (1990-2017)

[Former President tack50]

With 403 out of 428 Gemeinden counted, AfD is still ahead of CDU in Saxony. Will they keep their narrow lead or will CDU eventually overtake them?

Anyways, the fact that AfD will manage to come out in first place in one state is amazing

https://www.statistik.sachsen.de/wpr_neu/pkg_s10_erg_lw.prc_erg_lw?p_bz_bzid=BW17&p_ebene=SN&p_ort=14

[Former President tack50]

If the Bundestag results were also Landtag results, coalitions without the AfD were impossible in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. A "grand" didn't have a majority in Berlin, either.

Just realized that the AfD is the strongest party in Saxony.

Almost makes me wish these were actually Landtag results, just to grab some popcorn and see what would happen

[Former President tack50]

Wouldn't there be a "grand plus" coalition in that case, with FDP or Greens recruited to plug the gap? Although if those two don't make it given their weakness in East Germany, that would mean a pretty mad choice.

Actually yeah, an extended grand coalition would work in all of those cases:

Brandenburg: Either CDU+SPD+Greens or CDU+FDP+SPD would get a majority

Sachsen: The Greens only got 4.6% so they would theoretically be out. As for the remaining, CDU+SPD+FDP would just barely get a working majority (45.6% compared to 43.1% for AfD+Linke). Though considering CDU only got 26.9% (didn't even come first) and SPD got barely more than 10% this doesn't really qualify as a grand coalition anymore

Thüringen: Again, the greens only got 3.6% so they would theoretically be out. This means that a regular grand coalition would actually have a very narrow majority (46.2% for CDU+SPD vs 45.6% for everyone else except the greens).

[Former President tack50]

Even 711 MPs is still less than the 950 in Italy's parliament (counting both chambers).

Then again it's worth noting that Germany will have a parliament only barely smaller than that of the entire European Union (751 MEPs). Sure, Germany is a large country but 711 MPs is too many IMO.

They should probably cap their number of MPs to 598 (the number of direct mandates*2), and elect the list MPs from a single at-large list. Not sure how that would affect the results though. Maybe a tiny bit less proportional but probably not enough to worry.

Then again according to the cube root rule Germany should only have like 435 seats so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Former President tack50]

Even 711 MPs is still less than the 950 in Italy's parliament (counting both chambers).

Then again it's worth noting that Germany will have a parliament only barely smaller than that of the entire European Union (751 MEPs). Sure, Germany is a large country but 711 MPs is too many IMO.

They should probably cap their number of MPs to 598 (the number of direct mandates*2), and elect the list MPs from a single at-large list. Not sure how that would affect the results though. Maybe a tiny bit less proportional but probably not enough to worry.

Then again according to the cube root rule Germany should only have like 435 seats so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But if you did that you lose the pure proportionality rule.

Wouldn't it still be incredibly proportional though? I think 1/600 is probably enough to compensate. Or is there some weird scenario where 299 compensation MPs would not be enough for proportionality? I guess a party could say get all the direct seats and like 0.1% of the list vote, throwing off everything but that can also happen with the current system