2012 Elections in Germany

[minionofmidas]

There's a certain pattern to their support that can be seen in different cities.

Two patterns. Greens' strongholds (and perhaps especially "old" core Greens' strongholds - or pre-05 West German PDS strongholds as these are the same areas. ) and a generalized pattern of protest voting, predominantly relatively working class as these things always are, but probably also - this obviously doesn't show up in precinct results - predominantly very young.

[minionofmidas]

There were a few more token candidates, so yeah, I guess they got 6% of the vote between them. (Would need to check what they did with votes for one candidate only.)
Yeah, that's a pretty ugly result for Roth. Better than I expected (and better than she deserves, and worse than she expected) for Künast though.
Though Göring-Eckardt is precisely the sort of candidate that'll play better with party membership, or also convention delegates, than with either smoke-filled rooms or the electorate at large.

[minionofmidas]

I can't count. These figures add to 184%, not 194%.

Anyways that's 8.6% for the 11 random Joe Blows who individually noticed that Trittin was the only male candidate and therefore filed as well, 5.6% only one vote cast and 0.9% (times two) blank ballots / invalid ballots (say voting for more than two) / voted NOTA (there was such an option). And yes, the percentages are based on turnout times two.

62% of party members voted; the guesstimate before the election was 50 to 60. I'd love for results by state, but it's not available. Only the number of party members entitled to vote per state is:

[minionofmidas]

Fwiw, Pirates would probably top the vote (of those who do vote) in the stands at the Waldstadion today.

[minionofmidas]

What possible incentive was there to vote Green instead of SPD in 2009? Many millions of people vote kinda-sorta tactical in Germany, but not exactly in an entirely rational way. Of course, that's because the voting system only encourages some possible ways of voting tactically while proscribing others that people might actually be more interested in.

[minionofmidas]

Most of these people are CDU voters. (Sort of.)

[minionofmidas]

Nah, when you compare everybody's final polls and the actual result, the actual result tends to be the mild outlier.

[minionofmidas]

What would motivate a CDU voter to cast a "tactical" vote to save the FDP? Its not as if there is the slightest chance that even if the FDP gets into the Bundestag there will anything close to a majority for CDU/FDP (what I like to call "the bumblebee coalition")

The correct term is Tigerente.

[minionofmidas]

I think it's hilarious that despite the unpopularity of the governing coalition the CDU and FDP combined still manage to attract as much support as the red-green alternative percentage-wise.

Maybe because it's not so unpopular...

No, because the mainstream opposition is unattractive.