German Elections & Politics

[Beezer]

Greater Bavaria is only a matter of time now.

[Beezer]

Greater Bavaria is only a matter of time now.

Poor state lost Franconia and Swabia, and seems to have ditched Vorarlberg as well. It got South Tyrol back, at least.

Also, those placenames are all Bavarian German, right?

It will be a purely Bavarian ethno state.

[Beezer]

Seehofer will apparently hand in his resignation.

[Beezer]

https://twitter.com/europeelects/status/1014874985276592131?s=21

For what it's worth, election.de is still giving the AfD 3-4 districts: http://www.election.de/cgi-bin/showforecast_btw21.pl?map=btw21e_prognose_180615

As is INSA: https://www.insa-consulere.de/insa-wahlkreiskarte/

[Beezer]

AfD in a battle for first place in Brandenburg according to Civey.



https://app.civey.com/shares/1984

[Beezer]

[Beezer]

The latter. While Merkel remains in office there is simply no chance of the CDU cooperating with the AfD anywhere. The idea that the CDU has to be able to cooperate with the more "realist" east German Left Party has been floated on a number of occasions now by several CDU politicians.

[Beezer]

Since we've been discussing FPTP...

https://www.insa-consulere.de/insa-wahlkreiskarte/

[Beezer]

And another model:

http://www.election.de/cgi-bin/showforecast_btw21.pl?map=btw21e_prognose_180816

[Beezer]

If anything I think Chemnitz will help the AfD in Saxony. Lucke at least initially had a fighting chance as the AfD was far from politically established in the summer of 2015, so back then he could conceivably argue that he was well-positioned to take the AfD's place. Let's not forget he took quite a few parliamentarians with him. Of course the split ultimately occurred at the worst possible time for Lucke as the migrant crisis kicked into high gear a month later.

By the 2018 Saxon state election, the AfD will be in all state parliaments and could possibly come in 2nd in the European elections. There is no way AfD-leaning voters will want to waste their opportunity to send a message by supporting a party that has a rather slim chance of entering parliament.

[Beezer]

According to the latest "Deutschlandtrend", the AfD is now the strongest party in east Germany (27%), ahead of the CDU (23%).

https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article181445482/Deutschlandtrend-AfD-liegt-im-Osten-erstmals-vor-der-CDU.html

[Beezer]

[Beezer]

Oh boy...

[Beezer]

Berlin is a good example...# of non-German criminal suspects:



Share of foreigners among all criminal suspects:

[Beezer]

I know this isn't anything the people on this board don't know already but it's still kind of interesting to see the demise of the Grand Coalition over the course of 3 years. Given how stable the German party system has traditionally been, this is a rather momentous change of course.



Also interesting to see how the Left has been treading water for the past 3 years, something which I suppose can be attributed to its losses to the AfD in the east.

[Beezer]

At least in the eastern part of the country there has always been some substantial movement from the Left to the AfD though, even as far back as 2014.

[Beezer]

Party affiliation/preferences of Germans w/ and w/o a migration background:



Among Turkish Germans:



Among ethnic Germans from EEurope that migrated back to Germany, usually after the 1980s:



Source: https://www.svr-migration.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SVR_Parteipraeferenzen_2018.pdf

[Beezer]

So in about a month's time the AfD should be represented in all 16 state parliaments. Have any of the other smaller parties ever achieved that? I assume the FDP simultaneously held seats in the 11 state parliaments of the old federal republic, but I doubt anyone's been able to achieve this feat since 1990.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitzverteilung_in_den_deutschen_Landesparlamenten

[Beezer]

Why are the governing parties doing do poorly at the federal and state level? I thought Merkel was at least semi-popular, even after the refugee crisis of 2015?

I suppose this depends on your definition of "semi-popular". Merkel first entered office with 35% of the vote. In the most recent election she got 33%. Considering that she had been in office for 12 years, I suppose that could be classified as a halfway decent result.

David has already mentioned the main points regarding the SPD. It is suffering from the same problem most other social democrats have to contend with across Europe: The complete lack of a distinctive platform and the rise of socially liberal ideas at the expense of economic leftism which has alienated large chunks of its traditional white working-class base.

[Beezer]

One interesting side-effect of these new electoral dynamics should be the selection of judges to Germany's constitutional court. Half of them are elected by the Bundestag, half by the Bundesrat, in both instances a two-thirds majority is required. Of course traditionally both the CDU/CSU and SPD had more than enough votes to alternately nominate and confirm judges but that is a thing of the past now.

[Beezer]

We're gonna need a bigger Bundestag ... 900 seats

[Beezer]

So why are the CSU crashing in Bavaria after they had a hard turn right? you would suppose that would stop the spill to the right, but I guess there's a different underlying reason to it.

I think the most important factor is that it wasn't a hard right turn. Since 2015 the CSU has been playing a game of chicken with Merkel only to cave in at the last moment. Seehofer's supposedly major asylum u-turn during the summer has led to a handful of people being deported. A true right turn could have worked out (see Kurz in Austria). What doesn't work is raising expectations only to then disappoint voters.

[Beezer]

BTW, the AfD has now for the very first time surpassed the SPD in a poll of polls as well...

[Beezer]

Are we still doing predictions? I feel like the Greens' support may be a tad inflated.

CSU: 37
Greens: 15.5
AfD: 12.5
FW: 10.6
SPD: 10.5
FDP: 6.5
Left: 3.5

[Beezer]

Isn't that comment the exact opposite of Nazi propaganda?