2009 State and Federal elections in Germany

[Tender Branson]

Are the Austrians very attentive to German elections generally speaking, I mean the average people, the average media, just a bit more than for other countries, or not more than for other countries?

No, it's just me ...

The average Austrian doesn`t care about German state elections ...

(Austrian media mostly focuses only on important elections in big countries for example the US, Germany, Japan, France, UK etc.) and it`s different from newspaper to newspaper. You cannot expect to find useful in-depth articles and backgrounds in a tabloid like the Kronen Zeitung, which has pictures of Republicans portraying Obama as a Nazi and below the sentence: "Obama currently has a very tough time". And a few more lines. You would have to read the left-leaning newspaper "DerStandard" (which I do) or "Die Presse" to get serious background information, even for not so important elections, like in Andorra ...)

Thank you, and does the federal election has a particular place compared to other big countries, or not especially?

Yes, it's in almost every major newspaper right now and after the election the papers have nice commentaries and backgrounds and charts ...

For example:

http://derstandard.at/r1712/Deutschland

http://diepresse.com/home/politik/deutschlandwahl/index.do

http://www.kurier.at/aktuellethemen/bundestag/

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

Just watched a report on arte about federal elections. Well, personally, that's a long time I feel Steinmeier is on a losing trend, but more of that, this guys gives me the impress to take the "melon", if you know what I mean, to develop a bit too much the fact to think to be important (damn, my English leads me to have some complicated sentences). So, if he effectively loses, it gives me the impress that he would participate to mess up SPD a bit more then. Well, this from the very few I know from German politics.

[Tender Branson]

Forsa is also giving a breakdown of federal voting intentions in Schleswig-Holstein:

CDU: 35% (-1)
SPD: 28% (-10)

This is now the 4th state poll which shows CDU/CSU achieving a lower share than in 2005, but federal polls consitently show CDU/CSU at 35/36% and therefore about 1% higher than in 2005.

Maybe these local polls are better at highlighting the overpolling of the CDU in the final days, or the Union is just doing better in other states not polled so far, when compared with 2005.

[Tender Branson]

What should also be said is that Merkel could enter a coalition with the FDP, exclusively based on so called "Überhangmandate" (overhang mandates), without actually achieving a plurality or majority of the popular vote.

A overhang mandate is achieved when a party gets more elected members in the constituency vote than it is entitled to get with only the party list vote in a certain state (sorry for my bad explanation).

So theoretically, Merkel's CDU/CSU and the FDP could get 46% of the popular vote vs. 49% for Red-Red-Green, but because CDU/CSU has a 10-point advantage over the SPD, it would sweep the constituency vote. Therefore CDU/CSU would win up to 30 additional overhang mandates, enough to secure a parliamentary majority.

SPD and Greens are now attacking Merkel not to create a government based solely on overhang mandates, because it would be an unconstitutional government. The German Supreme Court has indeed ruled last year that the concept of overhang mandates is unconstitutional, but left open the possibility of a change in electoral law until 2011.

But here's another fact: The Greens brought in a parliamentary motion to ban overhang mandates, but the SPD voted against ...

[minionofmidas]

It's a little more complicated. The Greens' bill wouldn't have eliminated overhang mandates per se (a party winning overhang seats nationwide, as might happen with the CSU this year, would have got to keep them), and the Constitutional Court didn't strike them down per se. What the Court struck at is any situation in which voting for a party (with your list vote) might end up hurting that party. This applies to most situations with overhang mandates in the federal election system, though. The Constitutional Court seems not to have noticed quite how common such situations actually are. Their body of case law on election law is not particularly internally consistent.
One such case law, from post 1994, is that overhang mandates are person-specific. If an overhang MP dies or resigns, the seat is not filled again. So (contrary to Mrs Merkel's stated opinion) an overhang mandate is indeed very much a second-class mandate, and a Government based on them would not be a stable government.

Oh, and it's 2010, not 2011.

[minionofmidas]

Incidentally, I'm not at all sure the CDU will win all those fabled overhang mandates everyone in the know is predicting right now. Seems to me quite possible that SPD and CDU will end up sharing the direct seats relatively evenly again - which may mean that the SPD (having a smaller list vote) will end up being the party with a swath of overhang seats.
You heard it here first. It's an outside bet, but I will be collecting my accolades in case it happens.

[Tender Branson]

Latest Forsa poll:

CDU/CSU: 36% (-1)
SPD: 26% (+2)
FDP: 12% (nc)
Greens: 11% (nc)
Left: 10% (nc)
Others: 5% (-1)

Black-Yellow: 48% (-1)
Red-Red-Green: 47% (+2)

[Tender Branson]

The CDU-advantage in Schleswig-Holstein drops further, to only 3 points now and the Black-Yellow option is (almost) gone ...

GMS for Sat 1 (Sept. 18-20):

CDU: 31% (-9)
SPD: 28% (-11)
FDP: 14% (+7)
Greens: 13% (+7)
Left: 6% (+5)
SSW: 4% (nc)
Others: 4% (nc)

Red-Red-Green-Blue: 51% (+1)
Black-Yellow: 45% (-2)

Carstensen (CDU): 41%
Stegner (SPD): 32%

Federal election breakdown:

CDU: 36% (nc)
SPD: 26% (-12)
FDP: 15% (+5)
Greens: 13% (+5)
Left: 7% (+2)
Others: 3% (+1)

Black-Yellow: 51% (+5)
Red-Red-Green: 46% (-5)

Merkel (CDU): 47%
Steinmeier (SPD): 28%

[DL]

Are the pluses and minuses in comparison with the last poll or in comparision with the last election?

[Tender Branson]

For the last post about Schleswig Holstein in comparison with the 2005 elections and the Forsa poll is in comparison with their previous poll.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just noticed that election.de's prediction thing suddenly has a lot more red on it:

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, they moved, like, 12 constituencies.
,
,

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, they moved, like, 12 constituencies.
,
,

I've not seen it for months

[minionofmidas]

Yeah well, it was bluer last week. Their projection of overhang mandates also dropped from 16-3 to 12-5.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah well, it was bluer last week. Their projection of overhang mandates also dropped from 16-3 to 12-5.

Do some of them look a little odd to you?

[minionofmidas]

The whole thing looks odd to me. But I don't really know what to expect, I'm just assuming they don't either. They don't seem to be factoring in a Schröder personal vote in Lower Saxony until 2005, for one thing.

[mileslunn]

Anybody know whether the recent polls would be enough for the CDU/CSU-FDP to form a coalition?  I noticed the recent polls show both the CDU/CSU-FDP versus the SPD-Grune-Linke combined being under 50%, but when one considers none of the other parties are likely to either win any constituency seats or pass the 5% threshold, one of those two combinations will have to exceed 50% seat wise.

Also, I've noticed in the past two elections, the CDU/CSU did worse on election day than the polls said they would.  Is this just a coincidence or is this quite common throughout history in Germany?

[Tender Branson]

Anybody know whether the recent polls would be enough for the CDU/CSU-FDP to form a coalition?  I noticed the recent polls show both the CDU/CSU-FDP versus the SPD-Grune-Linke combined being under 50%, but when one considers none of the other parties are likely to either win any constituency seats or pass the 5% threshold, one of those two combinations will have to exceed 50% seat wise.

Also, I've noticed in the past two elections, the CDU/CSU did worse on election day than the polls said they would.  Is this just a coincidence or is this quite common throughout history in Germany?

Yeah, currently CDU/CSU-FDP would have a majority of seats in the Bundestag.

The latest Forsa poll would have the following seat allocation:

CDU/CSU: 227
SPD: 164
FDP: 75
Greens: 69
Left: 63

Total seats: 598 (CDU/CSU-FDP: 302 seats)

This is of course without the so called "Überhangmandate". Current predictions have a net gain of about 5-10 of these additional mandates for CDU/CSU.

As for the overpolling of CDU/CSU prior to the election, this was true in 2005 when the Union got about 6-7% less than what was predicted by various institutes.

In 2002, the polls were more or less accurate and predicted the outcome within the MoE.

In 1998, CDU/CSU overpolled by about 3-4%.

[Tender Branson]

The whole thing looks odd to me. But I don't really know what to expect, I'm just assuming they don't either. They don't seem to be factoring in a Schröder personal vote in Lower Saxony until 2005, for one thing.

Well, as far as I know they don't base their predictions on polls in every district. That would just be too much work and too expensive. Rather, I think they base it on current national polls and the swing compared with 2005. Then they look at the 2005 first-preference result in each district and project the result to 2009. Of course CDU/CSU was ahead of the SPD by 15 points a couple of weeks ago, creating a bigger swing compared with 2005 and therefore the map was bluer some weeks ago. Now, with the SPD running just 10 points behind, the map is getting redder with every projection. But the election day results might look a bit different, because you cannot project the appeal of the different direct candidates, even though election.de. says they were accurate in about 90-95% of the previous elections.

[Franzl]

We're having a debate at school in about 30 minutes!

All 5 parties are represented, most of them are sending their constituency candidates, and we have our current direct MP Patricia Lips attending as well.

[Tender Branson]

We're having a debate at school in about 30 minutes!

All 5 parties are represented, most of them are sending their constituency candidates, and we have our current direct MP Patricia Lips attending as well.

And, what did you discuss ?

[minionofmidas]

Well, as far as I know they don't base their predictions on polls in every district. That would just be too much work and too expensive. Rather, I think they base it on current national polls and the swing compared with 2005. Then they look at the 2005 first-preference result in each district and project the result to 2009.

They do take what little of state and constituency polls exists into account, or so they say. And "candidates", whatever that means. They are clearly not second-guessing what may be happening in parts of the country, or taking into account intra-state swings as shown at other elections much.

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That would make more sense if the polls were of constituency vote intention. Much of the SPD rallying of the past two weeks came from their fellow left parties.

Cough cough cough...

Hessian state elections, 2003-08-09, direct vote vs list vote

SPD     33,1 - 38,4 - 29,7       29,1 - 36,7 - 23,7
GRÜNE    8,5 - 7,6 - 10,6        10,1 - 7,5 - 13,7

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It's hard to do much worse unless polls are way off or you are a total idiot.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Presumably "candidates" means assuming that high-profile ones will do better than others.

[minionofmidas]

Presumably "candidates" means assuming that high-profile ones will do better than others.

Yes... but how do we rate who is "high profile"? How much do we factor in for that? In what constituencies does "profile" matter at all?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Presumably "candidates" means assuming that high-profile ones will do better than others.

Yes... but how do we rate who is "high profile"? How much do we factor in for that? In what constituencies does "profile" matter at all?

Well, obviously there's no objective way of doing that. Besides, didn't Kohl lose in a direct seat in '98?