🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

The money-laundering scandal seems to have much wider implications than expected:

According to reports, the search warrant for the finance ministry has already been issued on August 10, 2021. Some find it highly suspicious that the operation was carried out a month after the warrant has been issued - conveniently, two weeks before the election. This poses some questions. People always have pointed out that the responsible prosecutor and his boss, the justice minister of Lower Saxony, are both CDU members.

It seems as if Scholz was rightly irritated that the ministry has been raided - the prosecution has been ongoing since 2020 and the finance ministry has always been cooperative. Two questions are of importance here: Why was a police raid necessary, and, why did the prosecution wait until two weeks prior to the general election if the warrant had already been issues weeks before?

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

In the end, I doubt it changes that much; we just have to check in the next couple of polls whether the investigation into the FIU has any real impact.

Two takeaways concerning this issue: Laschet failed to make a convincing and coherent attack out of this and Scholz handled the accusation really well. He was able to use the defense to make a case for himself, and Laschet was visibly irritated by the passionate reaction of Scholz and the harsh tone he employed

By the way, what was clearly visible last night was that Laschet, for a man that has become really feisty in the last week, does not handle attacks brought up against him well at all. You were able to see that very early when Laschet had to defend his own stance towards the LINKE - really smart move by Baerbock because now, all of the sudden, Laschet was unable to stick to his script and had to defend himself on an issue on which he thought he had the upper hand.

Laschet improved after that, but that was the part of the debate which was really boring. Covid, digitalization and climate was really a re-run of what had already been said two weeks ago. I would have wished to have the candidates expand more on the issue of taxes and pensions. Laschet was decent in this section, but I think he would have struggled with more critical questions that would have come up if there had been more time.

By the way, I think the moderators gave off the impression of being really disorganized and uncoordinated. Maybritt Illner is a pro, but it was really irritating to see how much the moderators interrupted each other.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

INSA is doing a ton of polls, there's another one from today showing little move. We need more to see the effects of recent events and the debate. If the numbers roughly remain unchanged over the course of this week, Laschet is in severe trouble. I mean, he already is, but time is running out now.

https://twitter.com/Wahlen_DE/status/1437421172535267340

Note that the survey period could be characterized as the worst time for Scholz so far. That the SPD's numbers remained unchanged is a great relief for the SPD, even if we are talking about just one poll. Time is running out for Laschet. It's only 13 days until the election, and people are already voting.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

https://twitter.com/Wahlen_DE/status/1437729457964474371

No movement between SPD and Union in the GMS-poll. The movement from Grüne to FDP however puts R2G in peril.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Reading through this thread, I think people might be confusing "social liberal" as it is understood in the typical European political spectrum, and "socially liberal" as the term is typically used on here*. The FDP are not a social liberal party, at all, in so far as that tends to mean parties with a wet, economically centrist market-capitalism-but-with-a-functioning-welfare-state type. But they are broadly socially liberal in so far as wanting to legalise cannabis or relax the rules around gender-self-identification and the like.

Although even then, the nature of their ideological outlook stops them from being completely signed up to what an atlas poster would call "socially liberal". Their climate change policy essentially consists of magical thinking (let's just do cap and trade and the market will fix everything!). And their position on sending home low qualified refugees once "safe" to do so would create outrage if it was, say, the Danish Social Democrats coming up with the same plan.

* in much of Europe the term "Social" refers to things like welfare state and workers rights and redistribution. Not "social issues" as in atlas/US political speak

Yes, also, it is not "woke", what for some would constitute the extreme of being socially liberal - the FDP is pro-gay marriage (has been for a long time) and pro trans-rights, but they are also big on this whole "freedom of speech"-shtick, something that has not been publically associated with woke culture but by those who oppose it. Also, the FDP has a somewhat large internet following among edgy teenage boys, who are also not very woke.

Wouldn't FDP's economic views be a problem with a Traffic Light Coalition?  I believe SPD and Greens both want higher taxes on wealthy while FDP wants to cut them for all including wealthy so would that be a stumbling block or would they proceed with tax cuts for middle and lower income while leave top rates alone?  I would think on economic policy, CDU/CSU would be easier to work with than FDP as CDU/CSU seems more socially conservative than FDP, but more economically centrist.  Also how about minimum wage?  Does FDP support that or do they take the pro free market approach like Larry Elder of California did that there should be no minimum wage which until about a decade ago Germany didn't have?

You are right. The minimum wage was introduced in 2014, the FDP was vehemently against it. I think they have shifted on this issue - surely no one serious in the party would want to abolish the minimum wage and there is a broad consensus that the minimum wage must at minimum rise proportionately to the rate of inflation. The FDP wouldn't want to go any further, however.

Isn't it true that the nickname for the FDP in Germany is "the party of doctors and dentists"?

Yes - doctors, dentists, lawyers, hoteliers. Anyone with a large paycheck.

FDP seems to have undergone a remarkable number of transformations since 1949, more so than any of the big German parties.

It's been a wild ride, considering that they were the party of Nazi sympathizers in the early days of the republic.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

It's been a wild ride, considering that they were the party of Nazi sympathizers in the early days of the republic.

Bit more complicated than that, in fairness. They were an odd mixture of genuine liberals associated especially (though not exclusively) with the former DDP and Protestant right-wingers many of whom had views on the whole 1933-45 period that were a little dodgy. The bulk of the latter decamped, bit by bit, to the CDU in the 50s.* But this reminds me... one of these days I really should do some proper maps of the '49 election.

_{*Of course there was then the very strange business, decades later, of an attempt by similar people to take over the party again. People say that German politics is boring, but any country in which a scandal-plagued former Deputy PM kills himself by jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute does not have boring politics.}

Indeed, we should nonetheless not disregard that the FDP was in its early days the only major party (and with major, I mean with a relatively stable voter base and some long-term relevance) to openly oppose denazification, which of course attracted many Nazi sympethizers-- but still, we should not act as if there were no Nazi sympethizers in other parties (The CDU elected one as chancellor in the 1960s).

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

If that keeps up, looks like the Finance Minstery raid didn't have an impact. Maybe the opposite is about to happen, as the press increasingly reports critical of the handling and time. The responsible Osnabrück attorney is a CDU member and search warrant was already issues on August 10. So why would you wait a whole month for the raid? Usually a raid is conducted when evidence is about to disappear. Furthermore, the attorney's press statement and court issued search warrant don't exactly match each other. SPD politicians increasingly believe everything isn't a co-incidence and may be a hit job against Scholz (who's not even under investigation himself).

This reading of the story has resulted in the hashtag #CDUgate trending on Twitter for two days now. Now, Twitter is not Germany, but journalists are pretty active on the platform, and slowly, the story starts to break through.
The tagesschau has reported on these rumors yesterday online. Today, it is the big cover story of SPIEGEL online - unfortunately paywalled. I've also seen Ann-Kathrin Büüsker liking posts referencing the hashtag #CDUgate - she is a higher-ranking journalist at Deutschlandfunk, a very respected news institution in Germany.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

If that keeps up, looks like the Finance Minstery raid didn't have an impact. Maybe the opposite is about to happen, as the press increasingly reports critical of the handling and time. The responsible Osnabrück attorney is a CDU member and search warrant was already issues on August 10. So why would you wait a whole month for the raid? Usually a raid is conducted when evidence is about to disappear. Furthermore, the attorney's press statement and court issued search warrant don't exactly match each other. SPD politicians increasingly believe everything isn't a co-incidence and may be a hit job against Scholz (who's not even under investigation himself).

This reading of the story has resulted in the hashtag #CDUgate trending on Twitter for two days now. Now, Twitter is not Germany, but journalists are pretty active on the platform, and slowly, the story starts to break through.
The tagesschau has reported on these rumors yesterday online. Today, it is the big cover story of SPIEGEL online - unfortunately paywalled. I've also seen Ann-Kathrin Büüsker liking posts referencing the hashtag #CDUgate - she is a higher-ranking journalist at Deutschlandfunk, a very respected news institution in Germany.

So you think there will be last minute movement against the CDU? Polls have been pretty stable over recent days or Laschet made very slight gains in chancellor preference. Still trailing by double digits though.

Not necessarily, but it has the potential to prevent skeptical traditional CDU voters to hold their noses and vote for the CDU - assuming, the story gains more traction. If the polls don't move, Laschet will not become chancellor. But the CDU's voter base is strong. If there are 3% late deciders who will swing to the CDU, it could tie with the SPD at around 25%, or even take a slim lead. The result could be a chancellor called Armin Laschet.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

How would Green voters and members react if the Green Party ignored the SPD clearly winning the National popular vote and clearly having by far the most popular leader, and instead made a shady deal with the CDU and FDP. That led to a rightwing government led by Laschet?

The popular vote means literally nothing in a proportional system where you have 5 parties being represented.

I know that you want to say that it doesn't matter who comes out on top (which is also debatable, concerning standards and political traditions in Germany), but let me suggest a small correction:

The popular vote means literally everything in a proportional system.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Don't forget

81 - Berlin Tempelhof Schöneberg (CDU +6.9 over SPD)
Held by CDU-Moderate Jan-Marco Luczak, he is challenged by the young SPD-rebel Kevin Kühnert and the Green senior politician Renate Künast. In 2017, SPD and Greens were separated by 3.1%. This seat may easily flip, but it is a tight race between Kühnert and Künast so far.

204 - Trier (CDU +3.8 over SPD)
This is the district with the historic city of Trier (which is the birthplace of Karl Marx!) and its surroundings. The region around Trier is rural and catholic and therefore probably more conservative than Trier proper, which has seen a considerable leftward shift in the last few elections. Surprisingly, the seat went for the SPD during the Schröder-years, and Katarina Barley, who was the family minister then, came very close to winning this seat in 2017 against freshmen Andreas Steier, who is a backbencher without a very clear profile. The SPD chose a young start-up entrepreneur called Verena Hubertz - I thought that she was a not-so-good pick considering she hasn't lived in the region for years, but she seems to be a very good campaigner. This is probably the easiest pickup opportunity in Rheinland-Pfalz for the SPD. Note that the Landkreis of Trier-Saarburg also has a mayoral election. The incumbent, Günter Scharz (CDU) had to face accusations by Rezo of being too close with the coal lobby, and his challenger from the SPD is the father of a very nice girl who I went to school with.

205 - Mainz (CDU +7.7 over SPD)
The capital of Rheinland-Pfalz has seen a massive green surge lately, but what's good for the SPD and CDU is that the incumbent green MP doesn't seem to be massively popular. Daniel Baldy, the SPD-candidate, has a hill to climb, but given the shifts in the proportional vote, it's not impossible that this district flips.

Also, the SPD has nominated two PoC in the two districts of Frankfurt am Main: Armand Zorn, who was born in Senegal, and Kaweh Mansoori, the son of Iranian immigrants. Both have a good shot of flipping their districts, which are held by the CDU.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

How far behind are the CDU? Could a late swing or polling error mean they come first, or is a SPD win pretty likely now?

Some polls are within the margin of error, some are not. Most reputable pollsters have an SPD lead of 3-5%. There has been a slight movement in favor of the Union at the expense of the FDP, but there is not enough time. Federal election polls are always off to some degree, so there is always a surprise: Most underestimated the Union in 2013, most heavily overestimated the Union in 2017. Some things can always happen. But at the moment, I'd rather be Olaf Scholz than Armin Laschet.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

I don't really wish the AfD to overperform anywhere, but if they do, may it be Baden-Württenberg. The statewide AfD list has 12 nominees only, which means that any seat the party would get above that number would remain empty. Glad they're actively working to reduce the size of the Bundestag.

On this note, will the failure of the Greens to submit a valid list in the Saarland have any effect at all?

The Greens currently have one member in the Bundestag from the Saarland. They could have hoped to double their result if they would have had a list, they could have hoped for three if the SPD swept the districts and they would have been granted an Ausgleichsmandat (compensatory seat).

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

We should note, however, that the AfD has fueled election fraud conspiracies for years now and that there is not always a need to make everything about the United States.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

How will Election Day play out for those of us following for the first time?

Exit polls will be out at 6 pm local time. They are usually quite good and give you a rough idea about what's going on. Over the course of the evening, the actual results will be merged with the projection. If the results are not super close, you can with good conscience turn your TV off at 8 pm.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Postal voting increasingly becomes a strategical challenge for pollsters, and right now there is a pending lawsuit on whether pollsters are allowed to ask the respondents whether they have already voted by mail and if yes, for whom. Opponents of this method argue that this violates one of the constitutional election principles, secrecy.

Do you mean the Forsa-lawsuit? As far as I know, Forsa has won that one.

It happens undercover though, since the party leadership gets access to the data - I had also received leaked exit poll data of the 2018 elections in Hesse and Bavaria, which was somewhat accurate.

Even low-ranking party base members might know what the exit polls look like before they are published if they are members of the right group chat...

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Postal voting increasingly becomes a strategical challenge for pollsters, and right now there is a pending lawsuit on whether pollsters are allowed to ask the respondents whether they have already voted by mail and if yes, for whom. Opponents of this method argue that this violates one of the constitutional election principles, secrecy.

Do you mean the Forsa-lawsuit? As far as I know, Forsa has won that one.

It happens undercover though, since the party leadership gets access to the data - I had also received leaked exit poll data of the 2018 elections in Hesse and Bavaria, which was somewhat accurate.

Even low-ranking party base members might know what the exit polls look like before they are published if they are members of the right group chat...

Will us Atlas user be included in that exclusive club ?

Haha, sharing these exit polls is highly illegal. It's one thing to post them in the group chat, It's another thing to publish them on the internet...

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Anyone know what is the best TV news coverage for German elections? Either for English or German language?

The German John King, Jörg Schönenborn, will cover the election at ARD (daserste.de). For Englisch language, I think dw-news will be sufficient, this is at least the only TV programme I can think of which might cover the election in English.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Disappointing result given that the left still does not have a majority. I am hoping for traffic light at least but Germany will disappoint me and go for Jamaica I am sure (or worse yet, GroKo again)

The glimpse of hope is that Jamaica is harder for the greens to sell to their party base than traffic light is for the FDP to sell to theirs.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

How do you get a “ Jamaica coalition” from an SPD victory considering that red isn’t one of the colors on the flag of Jamaica?

In a system in which the majority of parliament chooses the head of government, it doesn't really matter which party comes out on top. It's not irrelevant, but it's more like a symbolic win. All that matters is which parties form a coalition that encompasses the majority of the members of the Bundestag.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Some of the takes on this thread when the exit polls dropped

It's a well established tradition that every time a large European country has an election, the thread immediately gets bombarded with American teenagers' takes that make the regulars want to pull their hair out

Good idea not to be online on election night. I know that many people come here to learn and I am very happy to provide information to anyone who needs them, but I must say that the one take that the FDP might form a coalition under their chancellorship if both Union and SPD fail to form a majority is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on this thread.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

The term "Jamaica"-coalition only really became established in the 2010s. Prior to that, it was called Schwampel (Schwarze Ampel). I hope we will go back to calling it Schwampel again because it sounds so silly

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

The AfD parliamentary group shrinks from 83 to 82 MPs, as one of the freshmen is considered too right-wing and thus not becoming member of the group. He might get guest status though, which would avail him to participate in group conferences.

Too rightwing ? How so?

And what's the reason they'd want him participating in group conferences but not as a member of the group?

Matthias Helferich is his name. He called himself the "friendly face of national socialism" on his facebook page back in 2013. He insisted that this was an ironic statement, quoting criticism from the left against him. Still, not a good look. He was elected on the party list before the posting was discovered.

If Die Linke hadn't gotten that third mandate seat, how would that have affected the results if they lost an additional 37 seats? Obviously every other party would have gained, but would there have been a SPD-Grune majority, or even close to one?

No, because the vote share of Union+FDP+AfD > SPD+Greens.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Why-FDP-will-chose-Ampel-over-Schwampel, Part #34642:

Recent polling has shown that FDP over prefer an Ampel-coalition to a Schwampel-coalition by 51 to 46%. So there is kind of a discrepancy between what the leadership suggested prior to the election and what its electorate now says. Greens will not go into a Schwampel: only 6% of Green voters prefer this option, while 92% want the Ampel. 72% of voters want the SPD to lead the next government, only 23% prefer the Union. Scholz has expanded his lead over Laschet in the head-to-head polling: He leads Laschet 76% to 13%.

There has also been a question on general voting intention with a very good result for all Ampel-parties.

SPD: 28% (+2.3)
CDU/CSU: 20% (-4.1)
Greens: 16% (+1.8 ) 
FDP: 13% (+1.5)
Linke: 5% (+0.1)
AfD: 10% (-0.3)

This is the worst polling result Forschungsgruppe Wahlen has ever estimated for the Union.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Elect a left wing government, get the same absurd attitude to fiscal policy.

RIP Europe. You were too conservative, too intellectually impotent and too risk averse to ever have much chance of adapting to the 21st century

If you add up the FDP+CDU/CSU + AFD + Free Voters, that's 51.1% of the vote. It seems like a majority of the populace actually wants conservative policies and it's only because the AFD is too toxic to work with you have a left-wing goverment.

That’s the problem, or at least part of the problem. The real problem is the SPD and Greens caving in to the FDP’s demands because they don’t have any meaningful structurally innovative economic policies of their own. There is interesting and creative left wing thought on economics out there, but the SPD and Greens are far to timid and lacking in imagination to start really incorporating them into a governing programmes; hence their happy to let the liberals dictate this thing to them in return for the popular but hardly structurally meaningful ones like the minimum wage

Well you can't claim that the people elected a left-wing goverment when the majority of the vote went to parties promising right-wing economic policies of various stripes. Hell the german left should be grateful that the AFD and it's toxicity exists as it's the only thing allowing them into power, if the AFD was a less toxic party or didn't exist than the right-bloc would have easily been considered the winner of this election.

Many, if not the majority of AfD voters are in favor of economic state interventionism. Jörg Meuthen is one of the last ardent neoliberals in the AfD and he is resigning from his position. Most AfD politicians either don't care about having coherent economic policies but many, and most importantly, the vast majority from the influential eastern state branches, would be strongly against an economic policy favored by FDP and Union.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Meuthen's resignation isn't because the party no longer supports his economic polices but simply because it's become more extreme than him like has happend with all the previous purges.

I never claimed this.

You are right to say that the average AFD voters probably doesn't care about a libertarian economy and might be in favour of state intervention but the party, it's membership and activists almost certianly aren't going to be in favour of that.

This is simply not true, especially regarding the AfD in Eastern Germany.