🇩🇪 German state & local elections

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Because it hurts his image of being a pragmatic de facto Social Democrat and there's a lot of ticket splitters who'd vote for the CDU on federal level but for the Left in state elections.

Ah ok, I completely didn't realize he was viewed as a de-facto Social Democrat. For whatever reason I assumed that The Left could afford--at least in the East--to be a bit more hard-left and less open to criticism on grounds of aesthetics or respectability.

I can see why you would think that, but AIUI the Eastern wing of Die Linke actually tends to be the more pragmatic one on matters of actual policy (being tainted by history is another matter), while the Western wing is the edgier one. Die Linke is an unusually left-wing post-communist party not because it is, as a whole, very left-wing (though elements certainly are), but because it is unusual for post-communist parties to be particularly left-wing at all.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

(mostly with minor parties/voter groups in local councils - the most crazy one is CDU/Left/Green/FW/FDP!)

Let me guess, the SPD is traditionally locally dominant?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Meanwhile in AfD: the head of the Berlin branch apparently thinks Berlin and Warsaw should jointly host the Olympics... in 2036. I have some doubts as to the viability of this proposal.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Let's check in on the polling for the Thuringia election that's been delayed more times than Half-Life 3 at this point (changes from last election):

AfD 24 (+1)
SPD 21 (+13)
Linke 20 (-11)
CDU 15 (-7)
FDP 8 (+3)
Green 7 (+2)

Thuringia SPD must really be furious they couldn't have it on the same day as the federal elections.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

https://twitter.com/Wahlrecht_de/status/1519709658931421186
CDU/FDP at 47%, SPD/Greens/AfD/SSW combined at 45%

AfD just barely above the threshold, it could be the first state parliament with AfD dropping out.

Preferred party as head of government:
CDU 46%
SPD 22%
Greens 14%

Politician satisfaction:
Günther (CDU) 74%
Heinold (Greens) 38%
Buchholz (FDP) 33%
Harms (SSW) 23%
Losse-Müller (SPD) 18%
Nobis (AfD) 9%

Preferred Minister-President:
Günther 61%
Heinold 10%
Losse-Müller 9%

What happend to linke ?

Dropped out of the S-H Landtag in 2012 and never recovered.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

This seems like a CDU outperformance relative to pre-election polls.

As soon as it became clear Habeck wasn't going to be the Green candidate (why would he have been?) this election turned into a classic German case of 'nice competent drama-free incumbent PM flattens relatively anonymous competition', so that's not really a surprise.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The one actually interesting thing about this election is the big SSW improvement. Was it more mobilising Danish-speakers, soaking up floating leftish voters, or a little of both?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

All of the (many) polls released today put the incumbent Union up about 3 points on the SPD in NRW, so while it wouldn't be a shocker for the SPD to win, the Union now has the advantage heading into the weekend.

One thing the SPD does have going for it is that their candidate has been gaining ground in the preferred PM polling throughout the campaign, and the same thing happening last time round was definitely a good sign for the CDU and Laschet.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

In the end this was one of those elections that surprises us with how boring it ended up being: exactly the sort of result you would expect given that the CDU are now in opposition federally, the FDP are in government with the centre-left federally but were in government with the CDU regionally (a bad place to be for a party so reliant on the votes of the politically non-aligned), and that this was the first NRW state election held after the Greens became more than a boutique party. It is, from a centre-left perspective, unfortunate and disappointing that the FDP lost just enough votes to the CDU to make a replication of the federal coalition very problematic, but such is politics sometimes. Most analysis that I've seen is either wishcasting or doomerism, rather than anything much grounded in what we actually saw.

If there are lessons to draw for the SPD, it's more that you shouldn't base your campaign around the assumption that everything's falling into place by itself and you just need to turn up at the count...