Schleswig-Holstein state election

[minionofmidas]

We gave back the majority Denish-speaking part in 1918. I think that was fair. Let the matter rest now.

[minionofmidas]

We gave back the majority Denish-speaking part in 1918. I think that was fair. Let the matter rest now.

tsk, tsk Lewis! it was in 1920 and on two occations the Slesvig-quetions caused the life of a Danish government. I 1920 when the king fired the Radical government because they wouldn't forcefully annex Flensborg after the city didn't vote Danish ( the king's actions caused a constitutional and political crisis and nearly turned Denmark into a republic) and in 1947 when the Venstre Prime minister Knud Kristensen wanted to annex most of South Slesvig (the Brits asked us if we wanted it) against the will of the Diet majority

Interesting. There actually was a short upswing of pro-Denmark feeling in Schleswig (well, South Schleswig of course) after 1945.
Schleswig-Holstein's population swelled from 1.5 Mio in 1939 to 2.5 in 1949 as it was a main point of entry for refugees from further east, especially East Prussia - and many locals resented that, thence the sudden interest.
There had been a separatist pro-Denish party in the Weimar years (called the SSV), but it never polled many votes even among Danish and Friesian voters.
Of course the whole 1947 crisis instead ended with a settlement that involved Danish language private schools with government funding, the SSW renouncing any separatist notions and being exempted from the 5% threshold, and probably a host of other provisions I am not aware of.

[minionofmidas]

Nah, he's right in that the CDU did a good bit better, and SPD and Greens worse, than the recent polls had predicted. I dunno what happened really. I hear that there was a TV debate a few days before the election and Carstensen performed better than Simonis...I hear there was a lot of rain (but turnout is only down minimally, so?)...or maybe the pollsters simply got it wrong.
Some notes:
Results by constituency show the Greens losing in the countryside and gaining in their urban strongholds.

CDU gains and SPD losses appear to be stronger both in the big cities and in the really rural areas, with the SPD vote holding up better in middling towns.

Although for most of the evening CDU and FDP had those 35 seats, they never were projected to have more votes than SPD+Greens+SSW. Now...apart from the fact that I never heard the fact mentioned on TV...the same thing almost happened in Saxony, too, a few months ago. CDU+FDP would have almost won a majority of the seats with fewer votes than SPD+PDS+NPD+Greens (not that those would have wanted to govern together, thanggod).

I sat around at my mom's place until half past eleven, when only two constituency results were outstanding and the TV channels were predicting a CDU/FDP win. I got home, turned on the radio, and heard the official result coming through. I had been a little shocked when I'd seen that self-same result projected at 6, but now I punched my fist in the air.

This isn't the first time we had to wait this long for official Schleswig-Holstein results...in 1992, the Greens failed to meet the 5% threshold by 57 votes, and the SPD maintained its majority of seats as a result.

[minionofmidas]

Already mentioned in this thread.

[minionofmidas]

Well, there was a pre-election poll of what people thought should happen in exactly the situation that has arisen.
52% said a Grand Coalition,
42% said red-green tolerated by SSW.

Safe to say that 80%+ of CDU supporters went with option one, so obviously the majority of SPD voters are comfy with a minority.

[minionofmidas]

This in a state where the most popular sports team's supporters wave the Danebrog a lot.
(SG Flensburg-Handewitt. A handball club, not football. Schleswig-Holsteiners, outside the Hamburg suburbs, are weird that way...one of the very few areas in Europe where Football isn't the no. one spectator sport.)

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, Carstensen seems to be suffering from Stoiber Syndrome right now.
Can't get over the fact that they came so close, yet are so far from power.
Really, Stoiber makes Gore look very balanced indeed. What's Dan Mongiardo doing these days?

[minionofmidas]

Ah, and I keep forgetting posting that...
Germany's Dixsville Notch.
Hallig Gröde, Germany's smallest municipality with 12 inhabitants, all of them over 18, is a small island off the West coast of Schleswig-Holstein. Obviously, they are always the first to report results, at ca. 5 minutes past 6 pm.
They had ...interesting...results:
2000
SPD 4 votes
SSW 3 votes
CDU 2 votes
FDP 2 votes
Greens 1 vote
2005
SPD 10 votes
CDU 2 votes.

[minionofmidas]

Voters can vote for any party. SSV's main group is the Danish and Frisian minorities but SSV also gets German votes. The SSV exeption from the threshold was part of an agreement between Denmark and BRD in the early fifthies where the Danish minority in South Schleswig and the German minority in North Schleswig/Sonderjutland got special priviliges

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What became of that btw?

[minionofmidas]

The problem is...you'd need a quite large state house if 5% of the minority vote is to produce a seat.

[minionofmidas]

While that's true, hte point is that it's not practicable for a minority this small. There's 69 seats in the Schleswig-Holstein state house. The SSW won 3.5% of the vote. Go figure.

BTW: That actually happened on the Frankfurt ward council of Kalbach in 1997. Republikaner won 5.3% of the vote but got none of the nine seats. They tried to sue, but of course lost.

[minionofmidas]

Grand Coalitions have worked quite often in the past...but not when SPD and CDU were of virtually even size.
I can see two more options, that I actually consider slightly more likely than the two options mentioned (but they're both possible as well): A "traffic light" coalition. And a few months of deadlock followed by new elections.

[minionofmidas]

Probably not, although I don't know how they calculated that. *Maybe* if you ínclude sales taxes of all kinds as well...what is true is that taxes, in Germany, is what companies pay the state to be allowed to employ people. Payroll taxes are deducted automatically, they don't reach your pockets for a second. *De facto* tax rates on company profits and on the self-employed, meanwhile, are extremely low. And don't believe for one second that
a) this has got nothing to do with our unemployment rate
b) the CDU would be any more likely to change this than the SPD...or than any conceivable political party anywhere in the world.

Ahem. Back on topic.
Actually I forgot to mention of one more option (which is however exceedingly unlikely) - a CDU/FDP government tolerated by SSW.
There are CDU-SPD talks now, as was inevitable. We'll see if these work out, though. I wouldn't bet on it. Essentially whoever gets the PM spot will have to give up on a host of issues since the parties are effectively of equal strength. The NRW argument sounds good at first glance, though.
One thing I've always been wondering about: is your username short for Ostwestfalen-Lippe?

[minionofmidas]

What do you mean, how?

Yes, CDU-SPD coalition. Up and running since about four days ago or so.