🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[parochial boy]

The take that I have come across repeatedly is that the Merkel years were defined by "management" and reacting to events while very much lacking in any long term strategic thought or risk taking. Hence falling behind on all the things like energy transition and digitalisation that have defined the campaign, as well as not being ready to step in to the role as European leader. Then, as the Germans are "inherently" risk averse, want stability in these incertain times and Scholz is offering that.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that there is a grain of truth in every stereotype and why it's kind of funny and fitting that the debates and the campaign more widely have steered away from the big geopolitical games.

[parochial boy]

A last minute shift from the Greens to SPD would do nicely, a narrative that the Union are "catching up" might not do any harm there.

The risk seems to have become a bit more distant in the last couple of days, but it definitely wouldn't be a good thing if that leads to FDP sneaking ahead of the Greens in the end. The Greens need to finish in front order to minimise any eventual impact the Liberals might want to have on economic policy.

[parochial boy]

Bavaria has been trending fairly steadily left for a while now. Baden-Württemberg hasn't but did quite sharply in 2017 in a way that can't just be explained by Kretschmann or what happened in the East. So it'll be interesting to see if that develops into a trend. Instinctively you'd kind of think so.

[parochial boy]

Oh great, just what we need. Another load of asocial economic migrants who will just come here, refuse to integrate and commit a wave of white collar crime, money laundering and tax fraud.

[parochial boy]

CDU voters "tend to vote in the morning" so you might expect a mid/early-afternoon poll to look good for them.

[parochial boy]

I am surprised to learn that CDU voters go to the polls in the morning. The election takes place on Sunday. I though CDU voters go to the church in the morning.

Yes, they get up early and then they go right after Church is the traditional explaination. In 2005 for instance the CDU knew things were very bad when the leaked exits at midday had them under 40%.

Anyway, that is if this isn't just what Aiwanger is pulling out of his behind to get more votes. I mean I think should treat this as we would with any "leaked information" a noted-antivaxxer spread on their social media without any sources whatsoever.

Haha yeah, in fact if you can make out what the Freie Wähler's number is there it definitely raises a few eyebrows (and makes it quite obvious what he is trying to do).

[parochial boy]

25-25 between SPD and CDU/CSU. Oh my god.

[parochial boy]

I've already switched the TV off. Always forget how boring election night coverage actually is. Just a load of interviews with about three seconds of excitement when the polls close [/hottake]

[parochial boy]

Someone tell Armin that a "Zukunftskoalition" would be one that isn't led by the octagenarian's party lmao.

Also both estimates having die Linke on exactly 5% is quite funny, hedging their bets there

[parochial boy]

ARD now has SPD 0,6% up and largest party.

Someone find the "it's happening" gif

[parochial boy]

I've already switched the TV off. Always forget how boring election night coverage actually is. Just a load of interviews with about three seconds of excitement when the polls close [/hottake]

Say what you like about FPTP it tends to lead to far more interesting election coverage than PR.

The fun coverage about coalition formation in the days and months that follow more than makes up for it.

Being honest, I tend to switch off from that as well. Most of the fun comes from the inevitable crushing disspointment of seeing my side always lose, followed by pouring over map and the explanations as to "why place X votes for party Y" over the following couple of weeks

[parochial boy]

I'm wondering, seems likely - but based on that Berlin result, it could wind up being that the SPD does relatively "better" away from the city centres as those places move heavily towards the Greens. So will be interesting to see how results in the Kölns, Bremens etc... compare to the rest of the country

[parochial boy]

Saarland final results:



Districts:
Saarbrücken: SPD +11.8
Saarlouis: SPD +8.7 (flip)
Homburg: SPD +10.5  (flip)
St. Wendel: SPD +3.0  (flip)

Proportional vote:
SPD 37.3 (+10.1)
CDU 23.6 (-8.8)
FDP 11.5 (+3.9)
AfD 10.0 (-0.0)
Linke 7.2 (-5.7)
Grüne 0.0 (-6.0)

Rot ist die Saar!

Most left wing region of France?

[parochial boy]

Some of the takes on this thread when the exit polls dropped

It's a well established tradition that every time a large European country has an election, the thread immediately gets bombarded with American teenagers' takes that make the regulars want to pull their hair out

And of course Tuttlingen would be the FDP's best result in the country. Uggh.

[parochial boy]

Disappointing result given that the left still does not have a majority. I am hoping for traffic light at least but Germany will disappoint me and go for Jamaica I am sure (or worse yet, GroKo again)

Honestly, I'd prefer GroKo to either of the tricolor options. FDP should be kept out of power at all costs.

I could understand if you meant the AfD; but why exactly would FDP be so bad in power? Worst criticism I can think of is them as some sort of party with few principles?

They're unreconstructed neoliberals and austerity fanatics in both German and EU politics. That's the last thing we need following a devastating pandemic.

Left-wing buzzwords. Neither the SPD nor the CDU want to confront the fact that a pension system where you pay in 20% of your average lifetime wage for 40 years and then want to get out 50% of your final wage before retirement simply cannot work especialy with germanies shrinking economic pyramid.

All the parties have been wasting Germany's economic surplus on wasteful pet projects and adding bureaucracy that has killed the construction of new infrastructure and companies by anybody except the very rich. The other parties have constructed a regulatory system that has made it punishingly expensive to build anythig new and are incabable of seeing non-state solutions to problems.

Except they're not buzzwords, the FDP are signed up to chasing after a pointless budget surplus (at the same time as cutting taxes no less) and restrictive monetary policy not just at a time of economic fragility but even after the enourmous self harm that these policies did to the Eurpoean economy that was only solved once the ECB loosened it's monetary policy and Mario Draghi's "whatever it takes". At least the CDU have somewhat moved on from this, but the Liberals haven't.

It is precisely this surplus obsession that is at the root cause of so many of the election's main issues  the failure to develop the digital and rail infrastructure, to build up renewable energies, the lack of preparedness for the floods all down to precisely that Germany's austerity obsession and ordoliberal dogmatism.

Add to that the FDP's naive faith that the best solution to everything is more markets; you can criticise the Mietendeckel all you want, but the FDP are just as much, even more so, signed up to the naïve and failed economic policies of the past.

[parochial boy]

Neoliberalism means nothing today and the title of austerity fanatic is applied too broadly. The FDP isn't some austerity obsessed culture are you try to paint it but rather the true practioners of Keynsian Economics. Surplus in times of economic booms should be saved to be spent when times are bad, but the Groko parties have instead created massive giveaways to their pet counstieuncies such as lowering the retirement age, creating illegal road taxes or uncounstional rent control.

The problem is that the lack of investment comes from a rigid bureaucratic and regulatory system created with good intentions by the greens and SPD to protect the environment to essneitatly magnify the cost of any construction or development tenfold through bureaucracy and delays. The CDU and CSU have also supported this system because it lets them resist any project that might threaten the status quo. The FDP is the only party willing to take on the entrenched interests and reform thi system.

You accuse the FDP to being wedded to bad ideas but I would argue that applies far more to the greens and SPD who both refuse to admit it was a mistake to demand and immediate end to all nuclear power in germany(essentially  destroying 2 decades of progress towards decarbonizations) leading to a rise of coal power. The RRG goverment in berlin has complelty failied to solve the problem of rising rents and poor economic perfomance of the city, instead of biting the bullet and realzing they need to build more houses to cope with their growing population they have resorted to populist nonsense like the latest non-binding referedum.

The FDP is not perfect and does have ideological baggage but at least they're pointing in the right direction and asking the right questions.

"Neoliberalism means nothing" is a buzzphrase that is pulled out by people who don't want to accept its ideological failures - just because the defintion isn't precise does not mean it means nothing. In fact I dare you to find a single person who doesn't have some conception of what it means, and everyone is going to have a conception pointing in the same direction.

I mean, I don't want to repeat myself. Everytime I have seen Lindner speak he has been talking about "sorting out the public finances" and stuff along that line despite the fact that Germany does not have a problem with it's public finances, has had a decade of record low interest rates, that a budget surplus is a tactic that should be used for specific circumstances and absolutely not be a guiding principle, even during periods economic growth*, and especially not now; and more than that, setting fiscal discipline as the guiding goal has led to to a decade of pain in Europe and decades of degradation of Germany's infrastructure. These are all things you can't really argue against, are the result of a CDU government and the budget surpluses and restrictive monetary policies are precisely envisged by the FDP.

And guess what, all that has caused a lot more harm than the R2G coalition in Berlin's antics - especially when the issues around housing are structural - linked to how the German and global economies have developed and would also only be made worse by a liberalisation of both the housing market and the economy (ask any Londoner).

The FDP are not Keynesian in that respect, their arguments generally come down to "we will create the best conditions for the market and investors to participate in". Keynesians recognise the requirement for deficit spending and for an active state to invest in the economy. The FDP think the market will do that by itself - as seen in the insistance the cap and trade will somehow solve the lack of renewable energy or the reliance on road freight. And I am not anti-nuclear, but as things stand, it would take 15 years to get it back in place, so is not really an option if you think the climate is an issue that needs to be addressed now. Moaning about what the CDU did in the past isn't going to make that magically any different. Add to that, the reason cap and trade has failed at the EU level is precisely because large companies have learned how to game it for a profit and the system has merely wound up benefitting big companies at the expense of smaller ones. So Climate Change really won't solve itself without the sort of active state the FDP are opposed to.

So no, they are pointing in precisely the wrong direction - their response to the key economic and social challenges facing Germany is to do more of what has gone wrong over the last two decades, except do it better? Come on

* Two points are relevant here - one is that the UK ran a budget deficit consistently from the 1940s to the 70s and reduced it's publid debt from over 200% to aound 40% of it's GDP during that time. The second is that the country with the best public finances in the EU in the run up to the sovereign debt crisis was... Spain. Did that help it at all when things went up? no. We have honestly moved beyond the FDP's argument that budget surpluses should be held up as some economic target

[parochial boy]

Snip

I’ll make this a short last one to avoid derailing further (sorry all) but you have failed to engage with my point about deficit spending enough to make it clear you kind of have to accept it.

The precise point is that no, climate change and housing are not simple issues. Because societies, economies and markets are all very complicated and intricate systems. So the FDP offer of a simple solution of the market, at best insufficient at worst downright harmful, is exactly the same as the populism you are decrying. Worse in a way, as it knows full well that it is catering for an electorate that will never have to pay the price of it’s failures.

[parochial boy]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

[parochial boy]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

Those fringe animal protection/ecological parties like Tierschutzpartei (TSP) or ÖDP often have some problems with being undermined by literal Nazis and other far-right extremists. The famous holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck was member of the ÖDP in its early phase, and some of the other animal protection parties like Tierschutzallianz have split from TSP because it was not distancing itself enough from those influences. That's the reason TSP lost its representation in the European Parliament quite quickly twice: The MEP for the 2014-2019 period, Stefan Eck, left the party for this reason and his successor, Martin Buschmann... left the TSP and the GUE/NGL group because it turned out he had been a local official for the NPD in the 90s.

crals has pointed out well that animal rights is a political issue low info voters care more about, and it definitely benefits them that their name directly implies what they stand for. For my hometown, I just skimmed the results and found that in areas with high unemployment, many migrants and generally lower formal education, AfD, Linke and TSP perform strongly, in the typical "middle-class" suburban areas their vote share drops while in more alternative and young quarters, Linke and TSP are stronger again (possibly also because of the lack of a Green list), with the AfD performing badly.

Yeah I figure it would be a protest vote. Skimming through their Wikipedia page, they still seem to wind up with pretty progressive positions overall. Pro-ish refugees, universal basic income, ban arms exports, cancel third world debt and all the homeopathy and other dark green stuff you would expect. But at the same time, not surprising it gets a bunch of neo-nazis too.

I guess if I was to hazard a guess at the median TSP voter it would be a 20-40 something woman without much education (works as a hairdresser, indulging my brutally shallow stereotype) in a small-middle sized town who doesn’t follow and is disillusioned with politics, but also likely environmentalist, vegetarian or vegan, likes animals etc… probably a slightly crass summary, but I imagine there are enough people like that around who would tend to see the appeal of such a party as a receptacle for a protest vote.

[parochial boy]

Given the results in Saarland, would it be unreasonable to believe that the SDP would have won a tsunami landslide across the country if the Greens had withdrawn in their favour?

In particular in BW, every single seat would have flipped.
In fact outside of Bavaria I see very constituencies where SDP + Greens < CDU

Not every green would vote for the SDP. Many green voters particulary in Baden-Württemberg
 would be inclined to go back to the CDU if there was no greens.

No need for hypotheticals. How did it work out in Saarland?

In Saarland, CDU got 24.6 %, slightly above the federal result of 24.1 % (102 % of the nationwide performance). On average in 2013 and 2017, the CDU got 93 % of its federal result, so this overperformance might have had to do with the Greens not running. Meanwhile, SPD, Linke and FDP strongly overperformed compared to their usual Saarland results. 

I did some analysis on the precinct results of Saarbrücken:



While Die Linke clearly overperformed in precincts where Greens had strong district result, it was more of a wash for the SPD, more so for the CDU. The FDP has a slightly positive correlation. Meanwhile, it's clear that there is no overlap between the AfD and the SPD.

Deriving from this data, I would not say that the main reason for the Social Democrats' overperformance was the Greens not running (although it was a factor probably), but rather the full collapse of Die Linke that got almost 12 % of the vote in 2017 in Saarland. This was overshadowed by a good chunk of Green voters opting for Die Linke instead, mitigating their poor showing.

What has the Linke vote in Saarland historically looked like? My initial reaction was that the West German Linke electorate tends to live in the same place as the Green electorate in any case, so that same corelation might still have applied even with the Greens standing. But then, given the whole Lafontaine factor and that bit of the Linke's background it's not necessarily so clear that would be the case in Saarland.

Incidentally, have they come out with precinct results for the minor parties yet? die Partei, the Tierschutzpartei, the Pirates and Volt got virtually 6% in Saarland, versus 3% federally - so I can see a big chunk of the Green vote having gone in that direction

[parochial boy]

Also sorry for spamming today, but how durable are the FDP's gains in the youth vote?

I don't doubt that they are now the choice of many young right-leaning people, but could we say that the FDP's soft skepticism towards lockdowns gave them an extra boost amongst the young and first-time voters as well? Or do we really see them keeping their 20%+ going forward?

Unfortunately Infratest dimap didn't ask questions about lockdown and COVID-19 restrictions, and I can't find any other exit polls like they have :/

A bit of youtube spam but this guy is normally reasonably ok (I'm sure one of the germans will disagree, but..) about things. The video reckons that there are a few things going on. On the one hand is the "freedom" (Covid, but the "you can be successful" message too). Add to that, pretty successful branding with he whole, the Lindner is a cool dude thing (erm, yellow posters), as well as visibility on social media that was less completely cringe than what the other parties put out (eg the Greens' song or everything Philipp Amthor ever does). The big push on digitaisation all goes down well, which makes sense really; it's a running joke here that when you get the train from Zürich to Schaffhausen you can tell precisely the point at which the train passes through Germany because it's the moment your phone loses reception.

So the FDP position themselves well, especially towards a certain mindset that a lot of non-left-wing younger people might have. Even then, it is also the case that a lot of young people aren't especially ideological, lots suggesting that there was quite a big number of people hesitating between Greens and FDP etc... which probably means there gains are rather precarious, but also probably means that the positions of all of the parties are going to be increasingly precarious and unstable in the future.

[parochial boy]

Well I tend to not label a party that was banned for clearly aiming to abolish democratic principles and the liberal democratic basic order (that's written down in the constitution for obvious reasons) as "progressive".

The difference between "progressive" and "left wing". I get the feeling that in atlas-speak they are often taken to be synonymous, which isn't always how they are used in descriptors in (probably principcally European). Eg, (being parochial) the Swiss Green Liberals are a progressive party, without being a left wing one - the same could also be said for the likes of Volt.

Which, continuing my obsession with small parties - a summary of the "progressive" vote would probably need to include the combined ~3,5% that the Tierschutzpartei, die Partei, Volt and Pirates got this year. Which is rather more than what the post war Communists were mostly getting.

Volt getting their strongest result in Frankfurt is a fitting example of why they are such a vapid, terrible party

Swabian Querdenker out in force. Although I met a guy from the Black Forest recently, and when I said that was Swabia I got a very, (very) long explanation as to why that wasn't actually the case.

[parochial boy]

Elect a left wing government, get the same absurd attitude to fiscal policy.

RIP Europe. You were too conservative, too intellectually impotent and too risk averse to ever have much chance of adapting to the 21st century

[parochial boy]

Elect a left wing government, get the same absurd attitude to fiscal policy.

RIP Europe. You were too conservative, too intellectually impotent and too risk averse to ever have much chance of adapting to the 21st century

If you add up the FDP+CDU/CSU + AFD + Free Voters, that's 51.1% of the vote. It seems like a majority of the populace actually wants conservative policies and it's only because the AFD is too toxic to work with you have a left-wing goverment.

That’s the problem, or at least part of the problem. The real problem is the SPD and Greens caving in to the FDP’s demands because they don’t have any meaningful structurally innovative economic policies of their own. There is interesting and creative left wing thought on economics out there, but the SPD and Greens are far to timid and lacking in imagination to start really incorporating them into a governing programmes; hence their happy to let the liberals dictate this thing to them in return for the popular but hardly structurally meaningful ones like the minimum wage

[parochial boy]

Well you can't claim that the people elected a left-wing goverment when the majority of the vote went to parties promising right-wing economic policies of various stripes. Hell the german left should be grateful that the AFD and it's toxicity exists as it's the only thing allowing them into power, if the AFD was a less toxic party or didn't exist than the right-bloc would have easily been considered the winner of this election.

I think it is quite a stretch to claim a less toxic, or no AfD would mean there electorate mechanically folding into the FDP or the Union. In any case, the fact they exist reflects the German electorate and that they are so toxic meant that there was effectively no possible governing population that could have been led or dominated by the right. In that respect, it is pretty fair to say the left won the election in practice, as they found themselves in a position to lead and even dominate a governing coalition.

With that in mind

I disagree. SPD and Greens aren't "caving" to FDP demands, they're making meaningful compromises. No tax increases and return to the debt brake (not to be confused with a balanced budget, the debt brake still allows certain investments) were key priorities the party ran on and promised to deliver in any governing constellation. In doing so, they received a pretty good election result. Compromises are the essence of any governing coalition if you want stuff to get done. If people wanted left-wing policies across the board, they would have given Die Linke a stronger mandate or Red-Green a seat majority. If these compromises were not agreed to, we'd either end up with a Jamaica coalition or another Grand Coalition, which nobody wants.

I would have liked higher taxes on upper incomes, but now we need to see whether certain spending cuts (especially subventions) can still provide room for certain other expenditures. The debt brake won't get reinstated until 2023 anyway and it's certainly possible the new government will borrow several billions next year to make massive investments in renewable energy.

Scholz also has pretty detailled economic policies how to make sure Germany remains a strong industrial country in the coming decade, especially by managing the transformation to a carbon neutrality. He talked about that quite a lot during the campaign and I have no doubt he has the experience and competence to get it done.

The point I am making is not that the Greens and SPD shouldn't have compromised - including on economic policy - I know that. The criticism that I am making is that that fiscal orthodoxy is a hugely important issue and that from the outset the fact that the two parties neglected it, while the FDP have always had it as a core pillar of their outlook means that they folded too easily and gave the FDP and the economic right a huge win on a hugely consequential policy area.

As in, we know how harmful this was not just during the debt crisis and the enormous human impact that had - but in so far as fiscal orthodoxy has been a key reason as to why Western European economies are falling further and further behind. Germany has structural advantages in its size, wealth, the euro that makes its landing a bit softer, but it still suffers the long term consequences of having a state that is tied up to surpluses and afraid to invest in its own success. In that respect, the EU's largest economy being represented by a hardline deficit hawk as its finance minister and in its government programme is something that is going to pull the whole continent down with all the human consequences that will have.

As for the efficiencies, they are are on old populist trope that you can free up money this way. In practice it will almost certainly mean a real impact on the end users. For example, cut agricultural subsidies and you have either a consolidation under agribusiness (and environmentally disastruous mass use of pesticides, destruction of bocages etc...); enforced cost cutting (and therefore worse standards for the animals and for the produce); or more exports and hence more trade generated CO2 emissions. Especially if you still aren't ready to upgrade the freight rail infrastructure..


Anyway, I'll leave it there - conscious I'm turning this into another argument about "why parochial boy hates the FDP" rather than the actual election.