German Elections & Politics

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wuh oh. New elections?

Possibly. But not immediately.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I get that but I suspect she will be blamed no matter what for this failure.

Hard to blame her for the mutual intransigence of the Greens and CSU (both quite logically from their perspectives) or for the FDP getting cold feet (again, quite logical from where they're standing). Internal grumbling in CDU would be more about the unexpectedly poor election result, I think.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Germany's FDP would support a minority Merkel government, Bild reports,

What’s the FDP endgame here? Why would they support a minority government but not become coalition partners?

They've obviously* decided that - the interesting question here is whether this was before the talks even started or during - Jamaica would probably mean sub-5% for both juniors at the next election, which they're particularly keen to avoid having only just returned to the Bundestag. But they would still like influence.

_{*Way too obviously, probably.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But they know that bringing about snap elections is rather impossible, especially since Steinmeier ruled them out.

This is why they're calling for them

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, things suddenly got interesting.

A happy reminder that high level politics can hilarious without a massive sense of impending doom also attached.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thats that I suppose, I guess we are getting new elections.

No, she can't actually call them. Right now this is just her expressing a public preference.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thats that I suppose, I guess we are getting new elections.

No, she can't actually call them. Right now this is just her expressing a public preference.

yeah, but with Merkel and Schultz putting the CDU/CSU and SPD towards new elections, it practically makes it inevitable.

No it doesn't. Just means that it's possible. This is one of those constitutional test case situations in which all manner of things could happen.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

56% on a card vote? Christ. That is a strikingly low figure.

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All post election polls here.

Mildly interesting that small house-biases are starting to creep back in after a lengthy period of crowding.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oooh this is good.

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They aren't exactly unincorporated, though, as they are covered by a principle local authority; unincorporated areas in the United States have no municipal government. The English term unparished might be more apt.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What entirely surprising news. I'm shocked. Is anyone else here shocked? Shocking.

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1. House effects: Some pollsters in a certain period of time tend to show results that are systematically different from those of others. For example INSA (whose boss is regularly accused of being led by a pro-AfD bias) tends to show higher AfD results than the other pollsters and also lower CDU results. But when you look at the actual election outcomes, INSA has a good track record. They were right (for whatever reason), the others were wrong.

Though there isn't necessarily even a contradiction here - it's quite common for fairly new polling firms to consistently produce results that are especially striking most of the time and then carefully move towards the 'consensus' position as a General Election looms. Polling, we should not forget, is a business - firms need clients; the best way to get them is attention (firms often use political polling as a way of getting business clients, in fact that's one of the main reasons to do it in the first place). And often which firm gets to claim to be the most accurate based off the final poll is a matter of a handful of points well within the MoE and is generally no indicator of future performance (the British firm ICM - which for over fifteen years flaunted a dubious reputation for accuracy based off the 2001 election - is a case in point).

But yes: most German firms have strong and observable house biases. None of these make a given firm any more or less accurate - that's not how this works. The correct thing to do when that's the case is to pay a little bit of attention to all of them, but not too much to any of them. Which is why I always get a bit annoyed in threads like this - cherry picking for the most SENSATIONAL finding is even more irritating than cherry picking for partisan reasons, and tends to lead to a pretty mindless and hysterical discourse.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

2. Random error: German pollster are polling the same scenario (federal election) again and again, they have experience. They also add a lot of secret sauce to their data and do not put their raw data in the headlines. You can immagine their raw data to swing much more. Because of this there still is random in the 1-2% range, but everything above that is certainly telling us something and cannot be dismissed as an outlier. I even would dare to say that the established German pollsters do never produce federal election polls that are outliers.

Yes - in a fragmented political landscape like Late Merkel Germany two points here or there matter a great deal, but are just as likely to be statistical noise as in a less fragmented landscape. What's striking is that though house effects have become much more noticeable over the past few months, each individual firm's polling results are very close to the last election. This is unlikely to be a complete coincidence.

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Exactly, yes. People in all countries are much more flexible with their votes these days: except for partisan die hards (and there are less of those) support is generally conditional by default. Which means that, and even more than used to be the case, polling reflects whatever is going on at the time - that might seem like a banal and obvious point, but it's easy to lose sight of the obvious sometimes. The present situation - with a tired CDU Chancellor and a very weak SPD leader negotiating in a frankly pretty weird way about a possible third Grand Coalition in four elections, following the collapse of talks with a different set of partners and with the actual election itself a very recent memory - is just about perfect for polling fragmentation. The situation that replaces it might be quite different (or not).

Of course there is one way in which present polling does matter - the impact it might have on government formation. Because, like it or not (and I'm not sure if I do), politics is now the most postmodern part of Western societies.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But yes: most German firms have strong and observable house biases.

The founder and CEO of Forsa, for example, is Manfred Güllner, who is not only a member of the SPD, but also belongs to the neoliberal Seeheimer Kreis wing of his party.

lmao yes that's the funniest one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway - decent chance I might have a bit of fun with the municipality stuff posted a few days ago. Nice to have all that data in one place...

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Some loser also made these, I understand:

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's almost certain that the SPD and AfD are about tied right now, after the SPD went into full self-destruct mode ...

Almost certain? If that's the case then why does no one else show such a picture? You're little your own biases and preferences are clouding your judgment here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There is something suspicious, but it isn't actually the AfD figure which isn't that much different from what others have shown recently. In fact it isn't a single figure at all, but a pattern:

12th Dec - 22%
19th Dec - 21%
23rd Dec - 20.5%
2nd Jan - 19.5%
8th Jan - 19.5%
15th Jan - 18.5%
23rd Jan - 18.0%
29th Jan - 17.5%
5th Feb - 17%
12th Feb - 16.5%

Those of us who have followed polling for some time will I think understand the problem here, I think.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But it is just not true that INSA was re-aligning with the others.

They sort of did (while retaining a mild house effect), but it was months before the election rather than weeks. The extent of herding from older firms does complicate things slightly o/c - the polling industry is in a mess world over.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Does it even count as a 'shock poll' if the polling firm in question has been obviously telegraphing it for some time?

Updated:

12th Dec - 22%
19th Dec - 21%
23rd Dec - 20.5%
2nd Jan - 19.5%
8th Jan - 19.5%
15th Jan - 18.5%
23rd Jan - 18.0%
29th Jan - 17.5%
5th Feb - 17.0%
12th Feb - 16.5%
19th Feb - 15.5%

One must also admire the half-a-percentage-point thing. Absolute classic.

Of course the really sad part is that you can't actually say with absolute certainty that these people are even the most obviously bent German polling firm.

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Yes Tender, I know that the SPD in bad shape

Exactly - they're in the middle of an absolutely bizarre leadership and party structural crisis the resolution of which is totally unclear. Political parties in that sort of situation tend to poll terribly, in part because if you ask people how they'd vote if there were an election tomorrow 'the total dumpster fire of a party over there' isn't a terribly attractive option even to people who always vote that way. Eyebrows are being raised in this thread for other reasons!

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That's not a poll for Brandenburg as a whole, only for the city of Cottbus.

...is there any particular reason why they decided to do a poll of the state election for the city of Cottbus? Bizarre.

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Of course if they'd voted no then the party would have taken a proverbial bucket of shit or three from the media for causing a political crisis - it shouldn't be a great shock that a mostly older electorate would be more concerned about that than about longer term worries.

It's also the case that the party did not exactly do very well in opposition in 09-13. I don't think there's much doubt that Grand Coalitions cause problems for the parties in them (because they restrict room for political movement, because the electorate feels that 'the government will win' no matter what and so is free to vote for parties with more boutique platform) but it's also pretty clear that most of the SPDs problems in recent years have been caused by a leadership cadre that basically sucks at electoral politics.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But it seemed like SPD voters after the election were leaving SPD (unsure whether to govern) for Greens (constructive negotiators)?

The recent poll slippage - exactly how large depends on the pollster etc etc blah blah - only started when the party's internal issues became increasingly public. Voters tend not to think that parties who spend all their time screaming at each other in public are very credible...