🇩🇪 German state & local elections

[mubar]

Bremen is apparently close between CDU and SPD.

I think this is the first time since the foundation of the Federal Republic (And maybe even earlier) that the Bremen state election is exciting.

True

No, I would call the Bremen election 1995 a true nail-biter. SPD and CDU ended up with the same number of seats and SPD was the largest party with just a 0.8 percentage points difference. Further, the 2 other parties who managed to get in were also close to each other, Greens being slightly bigger than the right-wing AFB (which was actually a SPD splinter but closer to CDU on most things). So red-green held 51 seats against 49 for the right. In the end they went for GroKo with SPD and CDU even at 37 seats each.

[mubar]

I would also say that while SPD having been the largest party in Bremen since the beginning of Federal German Republic and always leading the government is an impressive statistic, the election in 1995 could easily have led to SPD losing both of these streaks already back then. So, after the times (60s, 70s and 80s) when SPD could get majority alone, it hasn't been quite the one-party hegemony the media narrative often makes it to seem.

[mubar]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1132678410583646219

R2G and Jamaica have majority.

No, those are totally wrong exit polls.  

The AfD is polling at 7% according to ARD.

What do you mean, "totally wrong"? Those are FGW's numbers for ZDF. Infratest dimap has a bit different numbers for ARD. Later in the night we'll see who got it closer.

[mubar]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1132678410583646219

R2G and Jamaica have majority.

No, those are totally wrong exit polls.  

The AfD is polling at 7% according to ARD.

What do you mean, "totally wrong"? Those are FGW's numbers for ZDF. Infratest dimap has a bit different numbers for ARD. Later in the night we'll see who got it closer.

A difference of 2% is huge for a middle-sized party like the AfD. One oughta mention that ZDF is way more left-wing than ARD.
It'll take much time time to tally the votes as the Bremen citizens have five votes that they can allocate between different parties and candidates in open lists. Plus, municipal advisory council were also elected in Bremen today, using the same complicated open-list voting method.

Fair enough, it might well be that we don't have the final results until tomorrow.

I don't think it's in any way reasonable to evaluate the exit polls from FGW and dimap based on what posters here think about the relative left-right-positioning of German TV channels. Just look at the track record of exit polls:

Federal election 2017
Lower Saxony 2017
Bavaria 2018
Hesse 2018

In each case the difference between the 2 is small. Just looking at the AfD result, they had exactly same % in Lower Saxony (underestimation) and Bavaria (overestimation). ZDF exit poll gave a 0.5 lower number for AfD in federal election than ARD did, but they both overestimated, so ZDF was actually closer. Finally in Hesse ZDF had AfD 1 point higher than ARD had, and indeed got it almost right. So based on the 4 latest "tests", ZDF exit polls seem to capture AfD numbers better than ARD, regardless how left-wing the sender may be.

Further, I would think that any pollster or sender certainly strives to have as accurate exit poll results as possible. Any political bias wouldn't make sense as your exit poll quality will be directly compared to the real results anyway. So no matter what you think about polling in general, at least in this the pollster's jobs depend on how accurate they were.

What is true though is that 2 point difference between exit polls for a small party is rare. Must be related to the turnout model as ARD shows turnout as 66% while ZDF lower at 62% which is also a big difference.

[mubar]

SPD's worst performance in RP also, but they still manage to hold up far better:

That's not the SPD electoral history in RLP, that's the largest party share over the years.

Back in 1950s SPD was smaller and their worst performance in RLP is just 31.7% in 1955. They're easily going to beat that this time. And in other elections between 1947-1959 they got around 34% which is about the same they are expected to get now.