German Elections & Politics

[Yeahsayyeah]

Where can we find recent polling for Bremen and Hamburg?

Here.

But:

The most "recent" polls from Hamburg and Bremen are already several months/half a year old, which makes them meaningless, considering AfD's recent surge.

AfD will crash in Hamburg for sure, they profit the most from EU. I'm not sure about Bremen's demographics but keep in mind these are two free cities we are talking about and not regions. AfD took votes of Die Linke in the urban centres of the two states here so I can only see the making inroads in Bremen where Die Linke did well 10 years ago.

East isn't West

[Yeahsayyeah]

They got the exemption because Christoph Schulze won a FPTP seat. At the federal level you need 3 FPTP seats so that the 5% treshold isn't applied (basically assuring that the CSU will always get in the Bundestag) but in Brandenburg one seat is enough.

This.

Interestingly, only Brandenburg, Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein (1 seat) and Saxony (2 seats) have those Grundmandatsklauseln in their state electoral law.

[Yeahsayyeah]

The migration of 39.000 "other" voters to the AfD in Saxony is quite doubtful, of course. I would guess that there are at least some proxy 2009 NPD votes in there. There isn't much room for that. Of the small right wing parties DSU is stable, the NPD offshoot SVP (Sächsische Volkspartei - Saxonian People's Party) has merged into the "pro movement" and got there votes.  "Freie Sachsen" in 2009 was merely a Freie Wähler proxy, and they got more votes in 2014 than their antecessors.
Small right wing parties not competing this time (PBC, REP, FPD [sic],)  added to about 12.000 in 2009
So the possiblities were the missing votes come from (other than proxy NPD) would be:
* Tierschutpartei (Animal protection): They lost half of their 36000 votes and are quite socially conservative (but I'm not sure many of their voters are aware of that)
* Some Pirate voters of 2009 (I quess, most of them went crazy with Sonneborn this time, but maybe I'm wrong). The areas Pirates are strong are not the typical AfD ones.
* Freie Sachsen: If their voters of 2009 differ much from "Free voters" supporters in 2014, but actually I see not much room for that

[Yeahsayyeah]

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Just no!

[Yeahsayyeah]

The election of the Thuringian Ministerpräsident (Prime minister) will be today. Red-red-green has a majority of just one seat, so it will be interesting, if there are any defections. Expect some constitutional and procedural shenanigans, if defections occur:

There would be three rounds of voting. In the first two rounds an absolute majority of all representatives would be needed. In the third round, the Thuringian state constitution (article 70) states, that the candidate with the most votes is elected. The CDU (and especially the new Landtag president Carius (CDU)) have been presenting creative interpretations of the constituion, the last days: They state, there had to be the possibility of explicitly voting "no", if there is only one contender in the third round because the Landtag rules of procedure say so and Ramelow could not be elected, if there were more "no" than "yes" votes.

Well, the constitution tells otherwise and there is some precedent from Schleswig-Holstein in the fifties, where an election of a minority PM occured under similar rules as the Thuringian constitution has. This also has an equivalent in the Grundgesetz (constitution) of Germany, as the Bundespräsident is allowed (but not has to) to appoint a chancellor that has got the most votes in the third round of voting, but not an outright majority.
 But of course, the Landtag's rules of procedure and the CDU's whish to block the election of the Left Party politician Ramelow are more important than the constitution. ;-)


The session is supposed to begin 10 o'clock am CET. MDR will broadcast the election.
http://www.mdr.de/mediathek/livestreams/fernsehen/livestream-mdr-plus100.html

[Yeahsayyeah]

Probably the media attention in the last week (traditional "Dreikönigstreffen" FDP party meeting at the 6th January and the "ARD is filming Katja Suding's (the Hamburg FDP top candidate) legs).

[Yeahsayyeah]

It seems, that the "Pegida" movement ("Patriotic Europeans against the isliamisation of the occident" - yes, this is not made up by the Titanic or Postillon satire outfits), that has been dominating (poisoning) the news and political discourse in Germany for the last weeks is about to lose steam.

Since December several thousand people have been marching each Monday in Dresden under this banner, driven by fears of "islamisation", "foreign criminals",asylum seekers, "those damn politicians don't listen to us" etc. We all know the racist and antidemocratic standard phrases and the claim to represent the huge majority that is constituent of European right wing populism. Parts of CDU/CSU have been actually courting them ("One has to take the Ängste of the people serious"). They even have been given a forum in the rooms of the "state central for political education".
Civic society and engagement is weak in Eastern Saxony where the CDU (which is the most right wing of whole Germany) is dominating all branches of government and society, so protests against Pegida only attracted a few thousand people.

The export of the movement has not been very successful, where they mostly comprised of well known organized Nazis and Hooligans, while the Dresden head figures had been unknown to the public, before the movement started. Of course this also influenced their resprective agenda. While in Dresden the official statements have been more diffuse, demonstrations like Kögida (Colognians against...) or Legida "Leipzigers against..." have been much more vocal about their righteous Nazi agenda. And the protests against the Pegida offspring outnumbered them by far.
On the other hand the Dresden organizers try to distance from them to some extent and their also seem to be some pending lawsuits between Dresden and some other gidas.
So their seems to be a real East Saxonian moment in this protests, that underlines the often made points that the lack of a plural and vibrant civic society is fostering right wing populism.

This week now has seen several new developments - that also once more show the pure competence of the Dresden police department. One asylum seeker from Eritrea has been killed last Monday under obscure circumstances - and the first statement the police gave was, that they could absolutely rule out unlawful killing. After 30 hours they suddenly discovered knife stiches all over his body (that had been found bleeding before) and only after that the securing of traces began.

Also on monday they banned ALL demonstrations in Dresden, because of obscure alleged islamist terror threats against the Pegida Führer ... ähm... organisator Lutz Bachmann, as if there wasn't a civil right to demonstrate (or measures of personal security). This pumped up yesterday's Legida demonstration in Leipzig as a substitution for the hard core, that attracted around 6.000-8.000 (which is a tenth of what the organisers had claimed before), but also drew a vital and heavy anti-protest. (Leipzig obviously isn't Dresden, in many respects).
While Pegida leader Bachmann had been trying to distance himself from the more right-wing and violent Leipzig movement he had been supporting them now. And then the pictures and facebook comments went in that see him who claims not to be very right wing posing as the real Führer (with moustache and all) and calling refugees vermin and other very nice things, so he had to resign yesterday (but there others from the organisation circle, that have also come more to the public so Bachmann will probably not be missed (although his persona as an ex-criminal unemployed webdesigner that once fled to South Africa to evade prison has always been very funny concerning his stance against "mooching foreign criminals"). The other funny thing is, that the AfD announced Bachmann's resignation two hours before himself, which on the one hand highlights the connections between both and on the other hand don't know how to gostwrite a PM with the right letterhead is probably  the competence moment of the day.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Scholz would just happen to be Steinbrück reloaded in so many ways.

On the other hand, there seems to be some discussion, weither Scholz is "SPD's Merkel" or at least is "acting like Merkel" in a political sense, which seems to be very far fetched for me.

[Yeahsayyeah]

On the other hand, noone knows what Angela Merkel's CDU stands for and they are very successful at the federal level. ;-)

[Yeahsayyeah]

It seems that turnout now has caught up with the 2011 numbers, a bit. Weather was supposed to be better in the afternoon, so many voters probably have been taking that into account scheduling their planned voting time. Looks more 52ish now.

[Yeahsayyeah]

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Three times in state parliaments (2x Baden-Württemberg, once Berlin), once in European parliament isn't "never had any success". The fate of the Reps was marred by the two big i of German right wing parties: incompetence and infighting. The infighting, of course, has to do with German history and the basic question weither or at least how near they wanted to be to outright Nazis. It's the same basic question that is splitting the AfD now.

This was twenty to twenty-five years ago, though. So opinions in the population can shift over time. European integration was much less dense, then. The potential of the Volksparteien, especially of the SPD to integrate broad parts of the population (socially and politically) is in decline. (Related to the CDU this is overshadowed by the Merkel effect).

[Yeahsayyeah]

Lucke has now officially left the party.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Btw how is the new LITERALLT STALIN government doing in Thuringia?

(Also, the tail-end of the Green government of BW?)

It's working quite smoothly. No gulags and mass executions reported by now. Also key industries like bratwurst manufacturers still in private ownerhsip.

[Yeahsayyeah]

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Isn't "Incampment" more in line with their ideology? ;-)

[Yeahsayyeah]

Rumours go, the CSU is considering to withdraw their ministers from the cabinet, says Germany's biggest tabloid.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Oh yeah, because "the Germans" are a monolithic bloc with monolithic interests and opinions...

Link for the newest Seehofer saber shaking: http://www.bild.de/bildlive/2015/18-seehofer-43180494.bild.html

[Yeahsayyeah]

No surprise: Our left-leftist friends are professionals in reality-denying.

We all know, that dehumanization in terminology is common in Austria, but still there is no reason for this one-liners of yours, every day.

The policy of Europe trying a common policy of blocking the refugees at the outside borders has collapsed and all measures that can be taken to block them while keeping at least remnants of humanity, dignity and civilization will not be sufficient.
Concrete walls and self-shooting devices would, of course. We've had that, already.

The policy of every state building its own fences only leads to new waves, change of routes, uncertainty. It's cynyc to shorten the subsidies for refugee camps in Turkey etc. for years, so that even surviving is no longer sure for those, who have been there for four years, with no perspective for peace or making a living, anymore, and then to tell them they have to stay there forever in the mud, and on the other hand make solemn declamations wanting to "fight the reasons for people fleeing", despite fighting the people fleeing, actually.

And its just cynyc to complain about, that only men were coming (which is not true) and then to forestall family reunion measures.

And its just cynyc for every state to block all people at there borders and just let the other state alone.

Enough ranted.

[Yeahsayyeah]

The AfD has hit 10,5% in the latest INSA/YouGov poll on wahlrecht.de, overtaking the Greens and the Left!

CDU/CSU: 35%
SPD: 23,5%
AfD: 10,5%
Grünen: 10,0%
DL: 10,0%
FDP: 5,0%
Others: 6%

The boss of INSA is also an AfD advisor and they get their data from the YouGov online panel. So let us take this with as much salt as possible, until it is confirmed by other pollsters.

https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/zapp/blog/AfD-drittstaerkste-Partei-Zweifel-an-Umfrage,afd330.html

For instance, Forsa, which is the only other post-Paris poll out, yet has only an 1-point bump for the Afd, from 7 to 8 per cent.

[Yeahsayyeah]

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1. It is constitutionally possible, but a bit iffy, as the president is allowed to appoint the candidate with the most votes for chancellor, after they have been voting for two weeks, even if he has no absolute majority, but he does not have to. So a minority government needs the de facto approvement of the president to come in place.

2. The biggest German political topos is probably "muh stability, unlike evil Weimar", so the reputation of the model "minority government" isn't that high and it has not been tried as it wasn't necessary, since 1945 on the federal level. There have been some minority governments on state level, but they have had either interim character (like NRW 2010-2012), or have been quasi-coalitions with the junior partner not having ministerial posts (e.g. "Magdeburg model").

[Yeahsayyeah]

Forsa has it's own flaws, for instance wild swings for the headlines, and regular UNDERPOLLING of the SPD, which is quite funny, given Güllner's party mempership.

Of course, the writers of this peace seam to know nothing about the concept of margin of error. But for the moment, INSA is the outlier, and personal reasons and questionable polling methods may be the reasons for it. Just to put cherrypicked polls in context.

[Yeahsayyeah]

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One thing is, that measures have to be taken that they at least do not starve "in the camps in Syria's neighbouring states", when there are no possibilities of subsistence besides help from outside.

The other thing, what "securing the border" means in this context. Just to send them away is just relocating the problem, obviously and just leading to millions of gipsies. By the way, what a "safe country" is, seems to be subject to sprains of definitions, for instance if one considers the situation of Roma in the Balkan countries, although I get the argument to concentrate on groups that need more help, at the moment, like Syrians. But if one uses this argument, like the Merkel government, one should not contradict it, with new proposed measurements against Syrian refugees, almost every day, as they do now.

[Yeahsayyeah]

In a funny move, Germany's most important public broadcaster, ARD, has decided that Xavier Naidoo is supposed to represent Germany at the next Eurovision song contest.

Naidoo, who first became famous for his Christianity-based soul pop, has outed himself during the last two years (first at the so called "peace picket movement", than at Pegida and the likes) as follower of the "Reichsbürger" movement, that claims, that the Federal republic is not the legitimate government of Germany as the Reich never ceased to exist, and other conspiracy theories, besides homophobia, mysogny and the likes - all those things, that will make him a well respected representative of this country. ;-)

[Yeahsayyeah]

The Left as a party has a clear "Let's help the refugees" stance, at least the party leadership has. Red-red-green in Thuringia has a little bit more of an pragmatic edge, but still clearly on the pro side. Left base members and voters, especially in the East, is a more blurred picture, but most opponents either stay at the closet or loosen their ties to the Left, at the moment.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Now, two other pollsters have (Infratest, GMS) have basically confirmed the AfD upward trend. So Infratest and Forsa have them both up one percentage point on a weekly basis (8 respectively 9 per cent). GMS has them at 9 per cent (+4 up on a monthly basis, just like infratest in their Berlin poll).

[Yeahsayyeah]

The "Dritte Weg" is actually a "freie Kameradschaft" (street-fighting Nazi hoodlums) with a party banner, while the NPD is only collaborating and openly supporting such structures without beeing one and also have some people who ocassionally were suits.

So it is more a matter of style then ideology.