2009 State and Federal elections in Germany

[minionofmidas]

A little amused that Sodann got two more votes than the Left Party's delegates. He's hardly been a stellar candidate.

Of course, some discontent backbencher may have been thinking along the lines of "I'll vote Sodann as a protest on the first ballot, come back for any later ones".

[minionofmidas]

And somehow, almost every President ends up being popular. This is nothing new. Herzog was worse.

[minionofmidas]

And somehow, almost every President ends up being popular. This is nothing new. Herzog was worse.

That's true.  It's every time so that the people find the president good after 4 years. I find Herzog bad too, but i think he was 5% better. Maybe because I'm from Bavaria

Maybe so.

[minionofmidas]

Berlin poll from Forsa, for the state elections (not up til the fall of 2011)

SPD 26
CDU 21
Greens 18
Left 16
FDP 11

Lol.

[minionofmidas]

Btw, is there any chance that Mannheim, Freiburg, Lörrach–Müllheim, Stuttgart-North and Munich-North will vote for CDU/CSU when it comes to the constituency vote, to make it a complete sweep in the South ?

In 2005, the results were:

Mannheim: SPD+8.5
Freiburg: SPD+10.7
Lörrach–Müllheim: SPD+3.9
Stuttgart-North: SPD+2.4
Munich-North: SPD+2.7

It is interesting that the folks at election.de suggest that Lörrach–Müllheim might vote CDU, but not Munich-North, despite the first district being closer in 2005 ...

They're expecting the CSU to do worse than the CDU in comparison with 2005.
Maybe the MP for Lorrach is retiring too or something, I dunno.

North Munich people (the most working class part of the city btw... no, not the most leftist or even the poorest part. But the SPD's best part.) have something of a curious tradition of casting constituency votes for Social Democrats and list votes for the CSU, both in the Bavarian Landtag and the Bundestag.  As long as they know the Social Democrat in question, of course. (No, he doesn't have to be some "business-friendly" ultramoderate. Franz Maget certainly is not. On the contrary. Being a union guy ought to help.)

[minionofmidas]

Anyway, Lips is guaranteed to be reelected in September...I'd guess CDU +10 at least.

If the CDU does not implode like they did in 2005 ...

In June/July 2005 the CDU was ahead of the SPD by 20%, in the end the CDU won by 1 ...

It won't implode by that much, simply because it's current figures aren't that inflated.

I don't see CDU-CSU-FDP get a majority though. Unless turnout drops to 70 or below. And it'll be interesting to see how much tactical constituency voting there'll be, and by whom - I'm not really predicting anything on that count, except for the general direction (up). Depends in part on how much media play the issue gets, though.

[minionofmidas]

He made a perfect ass of himself over Opel.
He was right over KarstadtQuelle of course, but most people were.

[minionofmidas]

Uh, what? A CDU that wants to hold an election on a day ensuring high turnout? Has the sky just fallen?

[minionofmidas]

And it seems we'll get another state election this year: the Grand coalition in Schleswig-Holstein just broke down. CDU wants to hold early election on September 27, the same day of the Bundestag election (and therefore taking advantage of Angela Merkel's popularity).

So, we'll have state elections in Saarland, Saxony, and Thuringia (all August 30) as well as Brandenburg and perhaps Schleswig-Holstein (September 27).

"Perhaps" is good ...

According to the rules, the state parliament needs to dissolve by a 2/3 majority.

So the SPD would need to vote to dissolve parliament too, but the question is if they will (mainly to avoid getting killed by the popular Merkel coattails in the General Election like you said). They could vote "No" for strategic reasons and to hold the state elections next year to see if the climate for them is getting better after September ...

Anyway, the last Schleswig-Holstein poll by Infratest-dimap for NDR (May 15):

CDU: 37% (-3 compared with 2005 state elections)
SPD: 27% (-12)
FDP: 15% (+8)
Greens: 11% (+5)
Left: 4% (+3)
SSW: 3% (-1)
Others: 3% (nc)

Yeah, the SPD says that it will vote "no" on dissolving the state parliament and that they want to continue the coalition for the remainder of the regular legislative period. On the other hand, it's hard to see how the CDU can back down from its decision to terminate the Grand coalition.

This leaves minister-president Carstensen (CDU) with two options (and maybe he'll do both): Firing the SPD ministers and continue as a CDU minority government and/or deliberately losing a vote of confidence in the state parliament (which would also trigger an early election).

But it probably makes some sense for the SPD to vote against dissolving the state parliament: a) they could claim that it wasn't really their fault that the coalition broke apart and b) early elections are maybe delayed a little longer.

It does not make sense for the SPD to delay the elections just a little longer. If they can't hope against hope for better polling sometime in 2010, the federal election date is their best option.

They're just playing hard to get because of the way the CDU dragged this on and on and then suddenly acted on its own without provocation, pretending it's the SPD's fault. They'll come around.

(Or alternatively, maybe they could try Red-Green-SSW again. Okay, so I too doubt they have the balls.)

[minionofmidas]

Well, I once heard the argument that Carstensen could be "afraid" that there will be a CDU/FDP coalition in place on the federal level at time of the next state election in May 2010, and that this state could be the first where voters punish him and his CDU for unpopular decisions the new federal government would have made.

Yeah, may 2010 is something else. I was talking as an alternative to say a month after the federals.

[minionofmidas]

What does "beide gleichermaßen" mean?

"Both equally". That poll does not show what Tender says it does, really. What it does show is Carstensen's not suffering as even diehard social democrats don't blame him alone. Which is bad enough.

Oh, and lol at pollsters' disagreements over the strength of the Greens.

[minionofmidas]

Yes.

[minionofmidas]

There's probably some movement in the next 2 months

There'll be quite a lot but it will all be due to two causes: Turnout and Tactical Voting.

[minionofmidas]

Lol MLPD. I wonder who bankrolls them.

[minionofmidas]

Polls *are* showing CDU gains in East Germany to make up for the demographically inevitable losses in the west.

Or at least there was a snippet on election.de to that effect some months ago.

[minionofmidas]

http://stat.tagesschau.de/wahlarchiv/wid246/index.shtml (scroll a bit)

Doesn't say what they did about Berlin (there's three options, really: count the whole city as east, count the east as east and the west as west, or not count the city at all.)

[minionofmidas]

Looks like the CDU is holding steady in the West (~38%) and gaining about 3-5% in the East.

That's just pollster bias. I'm automatically correcting for what's likely - not certain - in a high-turnout election. (Note: CDU/CSU/FDP combined are currently polling exactly where they were this far out four and seven years ago nationally.)

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There are more old CDU voters dying off than can be replaced. Obviously the phenomenon is most pronounced in urban parts, but it holds as statistically significant nationwide. The CDU will have to appeal to new demographics if it wants to stand a chance of governing in the long run. This didn't use to be the case. There was a "structural" right-wing plurality in Germany once. No more.
It's probably more pronounced if you look strictly at the CDU(/CSU) than at the combined right - younger Conservatives are also more inclined to vote FDP instead. How much of that is due purely to tactics (or misunderstood tactics. Happens on the Left just as much, of course) and how much is due to really liking that brand of rightwingness better is impossible to quantify.
Yeah, I know the "people get more Conservative as they grow older" theory. It doesn't hold water. At least not in a sufficiently determinative way to compare.

[minionofmidas]

Eh, no. Some people do, but in general the people 55 today are less conservative than the people who were 55 ten years ago were ten years ago. Etc. (Doesn't hold for every single year among the younger generation, of course. But is probably safe to say anywhere from say people in the late 40s to the early 70s.)

[minionofmidas]

http://www.frankfurt.de/sixcms/media.php/678/2002_3_4_Bundestagswahl2002.pdf

Check the graphic at the top of page 225, or rather the CDU and Green graphs for the middle age brackets... (and keep in mind what I said about being more pronounced in urban areas).

[minionofmidas]

Re Steinmeier: Product Piracy. That's the Green plan with an unreasonable higher assumption for no. of jobs created put in. Smacks of desperation, frankly.

Re Schreiber: Sadly no. The trial won't start until after the election.

[minionofmidas]

Yes. The east-west border is crossed by two constituencies (Mitte being the other one). It is also crossed by borough boundaries.
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg makes some sense, nonetheless, as the two areas have quite a bit in common (despite their being exactly one bridge across the Spree linking them. ) but the other doesn't make much sense.
Besides, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg worked out as the perfect pro-Green gerrymander without being intended as one.

[minionofmidas]

The former Vera Wollenberger? Lol. Blast from the past. That woman has more than a few screws loose, as every last Green had noticed ca. 95 or so and every last Thuringian Christian Democrat had noticed ca. 2004.

The postwar histories of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain - and the Prenzlauer Berg - would be pushing the post limit, so I suggest you use wikipedia. (Though I haven't checked if they're good.)

[minionofmidas]

Or you could do three seperate posts

Fuck you.

(You know I love you. )

[minionofmidas]

Talking of Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg ...

The CDU-candidate in this district, Vera Lengsfeld, is advertising with this:

She's not the only candidate with weird ads in that very constituency...



Meanwhile, there aren't any constituency posters here yet.

[minionofmidas]

Random question: why is southeast Lower Saxony so SPD? Continuation of Northern Hesse?

If you mean a non-affluent protestant area that became much more Social Democratic after 45 partly just out of opposition to the Adenauer vision of the future, yes. It's much more industrial though, and was more social democratic before 33.

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East Frisia is a very insular and remarkable area, and has of recently produced some of the SPD's best results anywhere. (I suppose it can sort of qualify as industrial, too, at least in parts. The cities of Wilhelmshaven and Emden sure can.) The district west of Bremen sure includes some fairly industrial terrain (mostly opposite Bremerhaven), but I'm not sure that's true of the district east of it. (Obviously, both districts include some Bremen suburbs, and these aren't exactly that right wing either, the ultra-affluent inner suburban enclaves being within the city boundaries. Just as in Hamburg.) Can't be much more Social Democratic than the districts east of it. I suppose the a slightly higher swing would flip it, a slightly smaller swing would cause some of the other north east Lower Saxony places to not flip.