German Elections & Politics

[DavidB.]

Which parties profit from this increased turnout?

Mainly AfD, probably.

[DavidB.]

Sachsen-Anhalt has Landescode ST for a reason...

[DavidB.]

BaWü

Rheinland-Pfaltz

Sachsen-Anhalt

[DavidB.]

CDU leader in BaWü: Bad result, but no SPD-Green majority anymore. We stand for a different kind of politics, will talk with all parties except AfD to form a coalition.

[DavidB.]

[DavidB.]

In the new ARD projection for BW, the AfD just went from 12.5 to 13.1

... and now above the SPD.

[DavidB.]

FDP and Greens in ST right on 5%.

[DavidB.]

Haha: Julia Klöckner (CDU, Rheinland-Pfaltz): "one of our two goals, becoming the largest party, has not been reached, but the other one, making Red-Green lose its majority, has been reached".

This is in spite of, not because of the CDU's result...

[DavidB.]

Sigmar Gabriel clutching his pearls over the Sachsen-Anhalt result.

Haha: Julia Klöckner (CDU, Rheinland-Pfaltz): "one of our two goals, becoming the largest party, has not been reached, but the other one, making Red-Green lose its majority, has been reached".

This is in spite of, not because of the CDU's result...

Yes, the root cause of both is the same: AfD.

Exactly.

[DavidB.]

ARD: "To understand the AfD result in all states, look at this"
Question 1: Are you afraid the influence of Islam will become too strong?
Question 2: Are you afraid crime in Germany will increase?

[DavidB.]

AfD to 14.9% in BaWü, SPD at 12.8%.

[DavidB.]

On a completely unrelated note (this has always puzzled me) why do some European countries place a comma in place of a point when listing percentages?

because they (we) don't use English... these rules differ in every language.

[DavidB.]

Merkel's coalition "only" lost 22-23% today in population-rich BW. No need to worry ...

Wir schaffen das

[DavidB.]

Is there a link to the results in English somewhere???

You should be able to figure this out, I guess.

[DavidB.]

CDU, SPD and the Greens would have a majority of seats, apparently.

[DavidB.]

Where do you get that from, Tender?

[DavidB.]

Seems to me that AfD poses the same sort of problem that Linke poses for the SPD. Are we moving towards an Austrian style situation in Germany where the only possible government is going to be never-ending "grand coalitions" between the CDU and SPD??

Yes, and the situation in Germany is "worse" (in the sense that moderate hero centrist coalitions will be more inevitable), because the FPÖ is clearly more coalitionable than AfD. Also, the presence of Die Linke in the German party system, which is also rather uncoalitionable, means that the basis for a potential non-AfD coalition is smaller than the basis for a potential non-FPÖ coalition in Austria.

Eventually the CDU will have to move to the right in order to prevent more losses, but it might already be too late for them to push AfD away entirely, and by moving to the right (a process which we have seen in many countries already) it increases the potential for the "unthinkable" (actually not so unthinkable in the long run) to happen: government cooperation with AfD. It obviously depends on the circumstances, but this is the trajectory we have seen in so many places already, and I would not be surprise if one day this will become reality in Germany too.

[DavidB.]

Somewhere Bernd Lucke is shedding a tear or two...

Did ALFA even contest? Lmao

[DavidB.]

AfD keeps climbing in ST (24.4% now, wow) and BaWü (15.1%). FDP now under the threshold in ST (4.8%).

[DavidB.]

I mean, this looks very bad (or good, if you're inclined that way) but isn't really indicative of future elections. Remember the Pirate phenomena? Remember when people started to confidently assume the Green surge would last?

I don't agree. The Pirate phenomenon wasn't a pan-European thing, at least not nearly in the way radical right-wing phenomenon has been over the last two decades. Germany was an anomaly for the Pirate surge, yet it was an anomaly for not having a strong radical right-wing party. That has now changed. Of course that does not necessarily say anything about the future, but if you look at the rest of Western Europe, radical right-wing parties are popular basically everywhere. Germany has the exact same fertile soil for such parties to emerge and be successful, it just took the refugee crisis for AfD to really break through the "ceiling of shame" regarding Germany's past. I don't know if AfD will last, but I think the radical right, as a political force, will remain important in Germany, just as I'm not confident that the Dutch PVV will last yet I know the radical right will stay. I don't see any evidence in Europe to think otherwise.

Besides, given the result in BaWü one could hardly say the Green surge did not last there...

[DavidB.]

In BaWü, both Greens+CDU and Greens+SPD+FDP have a majority. Might be good for the CDU to stay out of govt for a while and let the Greens and the SPD include the FDP.

[DavidB.]

In BaWü, both Greens+CDU and Greens+SPD+FDP have a majority. Might be good for the CDU to stay out of govt for a while and let the Greens and the SPD include the FDP.

CDU-SPD-FDP will also work too.  In fact I think this what FDP prefers.

Yes, but it's obviously not going to happen given the victory of the Greens + the approval ratings of Kretschmann + the CDU's and SPD's defeat. The Greens will lead the next coalition, that seems inevitable. It's the question whether they will govern with the CDU or with the SPD and the FDP.

[DavidB.]

Can AfD and Die Linke work together?

Not in 3,000 years.

[DavidB.]

Apart from their political programs it would just be inconceivable in general. Die Linke is the party for the activist far left, these people despise AfD and its voters. On the other hand, many AfD voters see Die Linke people as dirty commies.

The thing on which AfD and Die Linke do agree, though, is that they are both Putinversteher.

[DavidB.]

But East Germany is a very different thing of West Germany.

Even in the East, the fact that there is some overlap in electorate does not mean the majority of the electorate would be okay with such cooperation. It is not going to happen -- not now, and not in the future.