German Elections & Politics

[palandio]

I cannot exclude that the Left is overpolled to a certain extent right now, but overall I would expect them to finish near their 2013 result (8.6%).

Western state elections have been a problem for the Left for quite some time, as has been the phenomenon of them being overpolled before Western state elections and then finishing under the 5% threashold. (I might even quote one of my own posts from before the NRW and Schleswig-Holstein elections saying exactly this.)

Polling federal elections on a regional level presents new challenges to pollsters. On a federal level they have perfected their magical soup that keeps their samples stable and representative, on a regional level they have more difficulties.

I think that the Left will lose significantly in the East (from 22.7% down to ca. 15-17%), which would mean slightly more than one percentage point less on the federal level.

In the West they will lose some voters and win some voters, the question is which group will be larger. The stereotypical new Left voter would be relatively young, often urban, culturally rather "progressive"/"alternative" and would come from the SPD, Pirates or Greens. Looking on recent election results in cities it is quite easy to spot this trend. Also with the rise of the AfD the Left has become less toxic to some leftish swing voters.

So do I say that the Left will get 10% because of all the new Berniecrats? No, not at all, they might as well get 7% or so. But what I wanted to say is that seeing the losses of the Left towards the immigration-sceptical right might cause you to overlook where the Left might actually make gains.

Also on Barney's comments: I don't expect it to have too much effect, also because de facto Steinmeier, Merkel and Gabriel don't hold a completely different position.

[palandio]

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There were polls in the middle of june by state done for the regional television mdr by infratest dimap

Saxony

CDU: 46%
AfD: 18%
Linke: 14%
SPD: 11%
FDP: 5%
Greens: 3%
Others: 3%

[...]

The AfD finishing second in some "rural" districts in Saxony is what one would expect with these numbers, but the CDU will win them huge anyway and the margin from the AfD to the others would be slim. I'm not that sure about the exact districts. There haven't been strong rural patterns in the AfD, SPD and Left vote, despite the urban-rural divide (which has been more of a CDU vs. Left/SPD/Green divide than a divide for the AfD in 2013). And there haven't been district candidates for the AfD.

 Bautzen and Görlitz are no-brainers. Meißen and Sächsische-Schweiz-Osterzgebirge could differe between well-off suburbs and the periphery, but have DSU heritage and all. Mittelsachsen seems culturally more likely for me than the Erzgebirge, but that's more gut feeling

I don't think it will be in the district which comprises mostly of Dresden north of the Elbe - which is around 80% of the districts electorate, and some suburbs. The Dresden parts are either "left-alternative (Neustadt, Hechtviertel), socially Mixed "Gründerzeit" quarters (Pieschen) ore well of (Weißer Hirsch), so probably no AfD-fortresses, the attached communities of the Bautzen district don't seem big enough to put them in second place

Of course, it is hard to extrapolate regional and local patterns with a change of the vote percentage from 7 to 18 percent for one party

election.de has a relatively weak track record when it comes to predicting local AfD strength (see e.g. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where they saw some potential AfD seats in Rostock and Schwerin but missed out on some of the Vorpommern seats).

In my opinion if the Infratest dimap data were the results on election day, i.e. SPD 11%, Linke 14%, AfD 18%, then the AfD has good chances to get the second place in almost all rural constituencies of Saxony, particularly the Eastern ones. And then after the rural constituencies the AfD might also place second in Dresden II-Bautzen II, not because of its genuine strength there, but because a three-way tie between AfD, Linke and SPD at ca. 12-14% with relatively strong Greens at ca. 7-8% would be very plausible and then it can go either way.

[palandio]

Once Merkel goes, and (assuming) CDU bounce back to the right, is there any chance of German politics opening up again?

I would be tempted to say yes, but the way in which you are phrasing the question implies certain assumptions that cannot taken for granted.

1. You are implying that for German politics to open up again Merkel needs to go first. Merkel might seem invincible at the moment, but there are other examples of politicians who lost elections after a long time in power (e.g. Kohl). "How?" is of course a good question. But the short-lived Schulz hype has shown that many voter want a new face and voter fatigue could at some point translate into votes for the other side.

2. You are implying that the current state of German politics is a result of where the parties stand in the left-right spectrum. I think that for now the upcoming election is about two major issues and neither fits into the left-right narrative:
a) (already in 2013) The world and Europe being in crisis, but Germany being relatively fine, at least for the moment and compared to the others. Then it's logical to vote for the status quo and for the person who embodies it, independent from left and right.
b) Immigration. On the issue of immigration there is no majority to the left of Angela Merkel. Immigration is a losing issue for the center-left. On the other hand the right-wing opposition (AfD) has failed to offer more than radical rhetorics and anti-establishment protest, and for why that is not enough in Germany, see a).

3. So will there be an opening? Quite likely at some point in the future because:
a) The CDU while holding the chancellorship has been notoriously bad at power transitions on the federal level (see Adenauer, Kohl). Merkel has for a long time been very succesful in eliminating all potential rivals, which might eventually bite the CDU in the back. The CDU is the party of the chancellor and when the chancellor is gone, it is an empty hull until it rebounds.
b) The issues will eventually change and the key issues might again favor the center-left.

[palandio]

[...]
In the end it doesn't even matterhorn...

Touché!

[palandio]

[...]
I wonder why he didn't agitate against the Left, as they are staunchly pro-Kurd and pro-HDP, plus they strongly supported the Armenia genocide resolution.

Maybe because AKP sympathizers wouldn't vote for the Left anyway.
A lot of German voters with a "Turkish" background actually vote for the Left, but these are mostly Kurds, Alevis and/or convinced left-wingers, and they wouldn't care about what Erdogan says.

If I would have to make a guess I would say that for many islamic conservative voters the default option has actually been the SPD because of being seen as representing working-class people and being relatively immigrant-friendly.
Some may have voted for the Greens because of them being perceived as the most immigrant-friendly major party.
Finally the CDU has become more receptive to immigrants in recent years, while still being perceived as the party for those who have worked their way up and as the family values party (compared to the other parties).
Some might also vote FDP, but not that many.
The Erdogan supporting AfD voter is most likely a complete fringe phenomenon.

So Erdogan told his supporters not to vote CDU, SPD or Greens because these have been relevant options for them, while Left, AfD and FDP haven't.

[palandio]

Sometimes I get the feeling that relevance and irrelevance are totally unknown concepts to some people.

[palandio]

Greens - 60%
SPD - 59%
CDU/CSU - 57%
FDP - 54%
Left - 52%
AfD - 49%

[palandio]

That seems like a surprisingly good score for Die Linke in a West German state - I guess it figures, if they are losing out heavily to AfD in their East German heartlands, and holding up better in the West, their might be less of a divide between East and West than there usually is.

The Linke has overpolled heavily this year though, especially in the NRW state election in May.

You probably need to shave off some 2% from their current polling. 5.5 to 6% seems accurate for NRW.

Before the NRW state election Infratest dimap overpolled the Linke by 0.1%. Before the Schleswig-Holstein state election Infratest dimap overpolled the Linke by 0.7%. Before the Saarland state election Infratest dimap overpolled the Linke by 0.1%. On average that's 0.3% to shave off.

8% for the Linke in NRW seems a bit high to me as well and might indeed be a combination of a slight systematic bias and a polling outlier, but your statement seems a bit exaggerated to me.

[palandio]

How accurate have AfD numbers usually been in state elections?

I am wondering if, as they are a relatively "new" party with a somewhat less settled voter base (ie most of their voters this time round won't have been 2013 AfD voters) they might be somewhat harder to poll - which means their numbers could be off in one direction or the other.

Looking at the recent polling, there does seem to be more volatility in the the AfD numbers than any other party (except perhaps CDU/CSU)

Last poll done before the election by the respective pollster. Negative numbers mean underpolling, positive numbers mean overpolling.

Baden-Württemberg (March 13 2016)
FGW -4.1
YouGov -4.1
Forsa -4.1
INSA -2.6
Infratest -2.1

Rheinland-Pfalz (March 13 2016)
FGW -3.6
YouGov -1.6
Forsa -3.6
INSA -3.6
Infratest -3.6

Sachsen-Anhalt (March 13 2016)
FGW -6.2
Forsa -6.2
INSA -5.2
UniQma -7.2
Infratest -5.2

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (September 04 2016)
FGW +1.2
INSA +2.2
Infratest +0.2

Berlin (September 18 2016)
FGW -0.2
Forsa -1.2
INSA -0.2
Infratest +0.8

Saarland (March 26 2017)
FGW -0.2
INSA -0.2
Infratest +0.3
Forsa -0.2

Schleswig-Holstein (May 07 2017)

FGW +0.1
INSA -0.9
Infratest +0.1

Nordrhein-Westfalen (May 14 2017)
FGW -0.9
YouGov +1.6
INSA -0.4
Infratest +0.6
Forsa -0.4

Conclusion:
After massively underestimating the AfD in March 2016, the pollsters were quite quick in adjusting their models, leading to relativly accurate (last) polls. What doesn't shine up when looking at the last poll from each pollster is that some pollsters go with the herd only in the last moment, Forsa's Berlin polls being a prime example.

[palandio]

What's the reason for the surge?

In my opinion some of the AfD's soft support is returning. Some had hoped that Schulz could throw Merkel out, some considered Merkel to be the lesser evil compared to R2G. Many had considered not voting at all, because after all they do not consider the AfD to be a compellent option. But now the result of the election seems to be settled with Merkel ahead after a lame campaign which in the CDU's case I would dare to call provocatively apolitical. So when thinking about the nearing election they decide to "hold their nose" and vote AfD.

In general it is quite typical that two or three weeks before the election the number of undecideds and voters in disguise diminishes. The question is where they go. Actually I have to admit that I was quite surprised by the current AfD surge. (Keep in mind that we are still talking about polls, not real election results.)

[palandio]

BREAKING CSU leader Seehofer questions parlamentary alliance with CDU.

If that is true, the forming of new cabinet will be fun to watch.

CSU now declined that they intend to leave the parlamentary group.

Btw: We should start a new thread

It's like telling your wife: "I think that we should seriously discuss divorce. I personally am totally against it."

[palandio]

One question, how easy would it be to make a CDU/CSU+FDP+AfD coalition?

I know everyone has said they won't work with the AfD, but that coalition seems a lot easier to create in my opinion than CDU+FDP+Greens

AfD already ruled out to join a government. Frauke Petry is open to the idea for 2021, but she's isolated in her party. She even today announced that she wouldn't join the AfD parlamentary group. If others follow, the AfD may split into two factions, as they have done for a while in the legislature of Baden-Württemberg. So, the new Bundestag hasn't even assumbled, and AfD is already fighting their own people. Will be fun to watch.

Merkel also ruled out to work with the AfD many months ago. Even the CSU declined to work with AfD. Let alone the FDP.

Is it a "Libertarian" right wing vs. national populists split?

In some sense. But the funny thing is that "moderate" Frauke Petry supported the anti-semite understanders.

[palandio]

What's going to happen for the Cabinet? Will Lindner get the foreign department and the Greens get the finance minister?

I read that the FDP recruited Werner Hoyer for finance minister. Lindner would rather sacrifice the foreign department than not having an FDP finance minister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Hoyer

[palandio]

The reason why the FDP wants Finance so badly is that they have a kind of trauma from 2009-2013. In 2009 their campaign was mostly about a "simpler, lower and fairer" tax system. But with Schäuble (CDU) in the finance ministry the only thing they could get through were minor tax cuts for hotel chains and similar special interest groups. After the 2013 election the FDP blamed much of the electoral disaster on its failure to "deliver".

[palandio]

State poll for Bavaria:

Wow.  Just when one could not conceive of SPD going any lower.   
[...]

I wonder if the SPD could fall below the AfD.

The SPD result in the 2013 state election (20.6%) was relatively good by Bavarian SPD standards. The 15% attributed to the Bavarian SPD in recent polls is more or less the 15.3% from the federal elections, so while this is of course very bad for the Bavarian SPD, it is also not very surprising. In fact 20% would have been surprising. I think that for the Bavarian SPD very much depends on their candidate and campaign. If they nominate some generic state party apparatchik, then 15% or less would be the default result. I'm not an expert, but Nuremberg mayor Ulrich Maly sounds like someone who could perform significantly better than a generic SPD candidate, particularly in the big cities and in Franconia.

Currently I expect the Bavarian AfD to score in single-digit territory in september because both Söder and the Free Voters will compete heavily, but I could of course be wrong.

When it comes to possible CSU coalition partners, the first option that comes to my mind is the FDP, which was already in government from 2008 to 2013. But after that they fell under the threashold and might be weary to repeat that experience. Next option are of course the Free Voters, but governing with the CSU they might find it difficult not to seem a complete CSU clone, so who knows.

[palandio]

So are FW more of the social-liberal complement to the FDP’s more classical liberalism?

Social-liberal? In what sense? Some of their policies could be considered vaguely social-liberal (anti-surveillance, free tuition, environmental protection), but for the most part their policies are centrist, conservative, populist or localist. Ideologically not too far from the CSU, but of course not the CSU.

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Good question. They might, but the risk is that they end up as a complete CSU clone.

[palandio]

The GRAND Coalition has no majority anymore ... (47.5% vs. 48.5%):

Presently an outlier.

Last Forza poll was 33 18 13 9 9 13
Last Infratest was 33 18 14 10 11 11
Last Emnid Poll was 33 20 13 9 10 11
Last Forschungsgruppe was 31 19 14 7 11 14
Last YouGov (a few weeks) was 34 19 14 8 11 10   

All that said, its certainly possible we start seeing lower CDU numbers, in this poll they think the FDP has recovered from their spiral. Every other poll, even the Forshungsgruppe one that also has a slightly lower CDU count still has the FDP declining - can our German posters comment if anything has changed?

There is a lot to say about polling in general and how this can help to understand the current situation. When looking on polls there are at least two points to take into account:

1. House effects: Some pollsters in a certain period of time tend to show results that are systematically different from those of others. For example INSA (whose boss is regularly accused of being led by a pro-AfD bias) tends to show higher AfD results than the other pollsters and also lower CDU results. But when you look at the actual election outcomes, INSA has a good track record. They were right (for whatever reason), the others were wrong.

2. Random error: German pollster are polling the same scenario (federal election) again and again, they have experience. They also add a lot of secret sauce to their data and do not put their raw data in the headlines. You can immagine their raw data to swing much more. Because of this there still is random in the 1-2% range, but everything above that is certainly telling us something and cannot be dismissed as an outlier. I even would dare to say that the established German pollsters do never produce federal election polls that are outliers.

For what regards the FDP: They have been esentially stable for the last 6-8 weeks at ca. 2 points below their last result, with INSA showing relatively strong numbers and FGW lower numbers than everyone else.

I can certainly immagine that the results of the coalition negotiations will have an effect on the polling numbers. What is my impression so far is that the discussion about family reunions for refugees has damaged the SPD both with voters who lean right and who lean left on this issue.

[palandio]

This is just amazing. The CDU has not only dropped any pretense of being a conservative party, it has now ceded virtually all major ministries to the SPD in an effort to somehow keep Merkel in power for another 4 years. All the AfD now has to do is sit back and enjoy its rising poll numbers.

Do you think their is any room for a nationwide party left of the AFD but more conservative then the CDU? Could the FDP take some of that space?

My impression is that up to a certain degree the FDP already fulfilled that role in the last federal election. If I remember correctly at some point Lindner even called his FDP the "alternative to the Alternative".

That being said the political spectrum has much more than one dimension and the FDP with its economic liberalism (in the European sense) won't be able to take all of the space between CDU and AfD.

[palandio]

You never know where the numbers really stand when there is no election.

But it is just not true that INSA was re-aligning with the others. INSA was closer to the actual result than everyone else and INSA's "house effect" was in the same direction as it had always been and as it turned out to be right in this direction.

I don't claim that INSA is generally the best. Maybe they have a constant AfD bias and were just lucky that they got it right in a certain environment. But it's too easy to dismiss INSA when it has actually been the others who were further away from the final result the whole time.

[palandio]

Ok, I took a look at the polling before the federal election again and it turns out that during most of the time INSA had an anti-CDU/CSU house effect (good in 2017), neutral on SPD (as bad as the others), pro-AfD (good in 2017), neutral (mildly favorable until mid August) on FDP (they should have sticked to their bias), pro-Linke (not so good) and anti-Greens (bad).

So yes, they are producing polls with a certain bias, but so are most firms (Forsa is far worse imho). You can also accuse them of herding regarding the Greens if you want. But their low CDU/CSU numbers and their high AfD numbers are not the result of herding, and neither is the low SPD number directly before the federal election.

Regarding the monotone and smooth curves: There is no doubt that INSA is heavily smoothing out their raw numbers, like all German polling firm do to a certain extent. But I think that they have raw numbers, they don't make them up entirely. And they know their business, at least when it comes to the final poll.

[palandio]

The poll was commissioned by the local public broadcaster:
https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2018/03/umfrage-cottbus-afd-sonntagsfrage-wahlen.html

2017 federal election results for the city of Cottbus:
AfD 24.3%
CDU 22.9%
Linke 18.5%
SPD 15.4%
FDP 8.1%
Grüne 3.8%

The reason why they did a poll specifically in Cottbus is probably that during the last weeks there has been a lot of tension in the city between recently arrived immigrants and parts of the city's population. There has been a lot of reporting on this not only in the local news.

[palandio]

Something remarkable happened. But watch yourself:

New INSA poll:
CDU/CSU 32% (-1)
SPD 17.5% (+2.5)
AfD 15% (+-0)
Linke 12% (+-0)
Grüne 11% (-1)
FDP 9.5% (-0.5)
Others 3% (+-0)

After decreasing or stagnating 14 times in a row, SPD has moved up by 2.5%.

[palandio]

Andrea Nahles was unsurprisingly elected SPD chairwoman. She received 414 (66.3%) out of 624 valid delegate votes. Insurgent Simone Lange received 172 votes (27.6%). There were 38 abstentions (6.1%) and 7 invalid votes.

Not a very great result for Nahles who had the backing of the complete party establishment, but expected given the discontent in the party.

[palandio]

Convention of The Left in Leipzig.

A lot of internal strife, but the cleavages have shifted compared to the past. In the past the main cleavage was between realos who are open to make compromises in coalition governments, and fundis who are much less open to compromise on the core issues. Both the party leadership and the caucus leadership composition are the result of compromises between these wings. Realo Katja Kipping and fundi Bernd Riexinger are the party chairmen. Fundi Sahra Wagenknecht and realo Dietmar Bartsch are the caucus leaders.

The new main cleavage seems to be between Wagenknecht and some of her allies who want to follow a more populist direction, particularly on immigration on one side; and Kipping, Riexinger and probably the majority of the party, who follow the no border credo, on the other side. In the parliamentary caucus there seems to be a tactical alliance between Wagenknecht's supporters and their former adversaries, the Eastern traditionalists around Bartsch, without Bartsch sharing most of Wagenknecht's political positions. There has been speculation about a pro-Wagenknecht candidate running for party leadership, but it seems that Kipping and Riexinger will run unopposed. The main contested position seems to be party secretary, where the race is between Jörg Schindler who is supported by the party leadership, and Frank Tempel from the Bartsch wing.

My impression is that Wagenknecht will split from the party in the close future. The question is who will follow her.

[palandio]

Almost all delegates on the Left convention voted for a motion that calls for open borders. (An earlier draft had called for open borders for all).

Kipping and Riexinger were reelected without challengers, but with lackluster percentages (Kipping 64.5%, Riexinger 73.8%).

Schindler won against Tempel, but only on the second ballot with a plurality of three votes.

Difficult to say what all of this means. It seems to me that a majority of the party supports the non-restrictive course on immigration but probably wants to put the issue in the background. On the other hand a significant minority puts at least part of the blame for the strife on the party leadership and doesn't want to go full Kipping-style SJW mode. They want to hold the party together somehow which will be difficult enough.