German Elections & Politics

[Famous Mortimer]

Abolish it altogether? How would that work? Or do they just want to set it low at like 1%?

[Famous Mortimer]

"His IP address has been recorded with a Canada-based child pornography ring. However - a politician with focus on crime prevention may also have professional reasons to check out such a site."

This is proof he is a pedo. You do not need to see pictures of little kids getting penetrated to know it's bad.

[Famous Mortimer]

Early national elections?

I think they may have overplayed their hand.

[Famous Mortimer]

Two grand coalitions replace two Red-Green governments. A Red-Green government becomes a Black-Red-Green government. This was actually not that horrible of a night for Merkel.

[Famous Mortimer]

What's the FDP like nowadays? Does it stand for anything?

[Famous Mortimer]

I'll ask again but because no one answered. What does the FDP stand for now? Are they still libertarian? Did they move back to being left liberals? Why did they come back in the polls to win seats?

[Famous Mortimer]

Wow, surprised the traffic light coalition actually went through.

[Famous Mortimer]

There is another obvious reason for Left being more common as a source for AfD votes in the East: there are not too many Left voters in the West to begin with. Except in the Saarland and the city-states they are nearly invisible in the West.

It is (the few Western exceptions notwithstanding) a socially conservative populist illiberal Eastern party.

It's voters are socially conservative illiberal populists. It's members and leaders not so much.

[Famous Mortimer]

Merkel would prefer a Jamaica coalition (or even a CDU/CSU-Green coalition) to a CDU/CSU-FDP coalition. She would actually prefer a grand coalition to a CDU/CSU-FDP coalition, it's just that the SPD might deny her.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm going to go ahead and predict an upset, SPD, Greens, and the Left win a majority (as they did last time) and actually end up forming a government.

[Famous Mortimer]

What is the FDP's current ideological stance?

[Famous Mortimer]

  That INSA poll is really interesting. It seems to show that many CDU, and FDP voters and some SPD voters (or are they just voting more to the left in this scenario?) would switch, but not many AFD voters. I would have thought that big chunks of the non-Bavarian AFD voters would be attracted to a national CSU.

Makes sense. Nation-wide CSU voters are people who don't like immigration but were too afraid to vote for the "Nazi" AfD. The CSU just has to worry about the media labeling them Nazis.

[Famous Mortimer]

For the first time in 70 years, the Bavarian Governor (Söder, CSU) will not invite the leader of the CDU to his final campaign event ahead of the Bavarian state election this fall.

Instead of inviting Merkel to campaign with him, Söder will invite Chancellor Sebastian Kurz to campaign with him:

https://derstandard.at/2000082146041/Wahlkampf-in-Bayern-Soeder-will-Kundgebung-mit-Kurz-statt-Merkel

Arent' foreign leaders supposed to be neutral? It's like Merkel campaigning for Theresa May or Donald Trump for the AfD.

No. Who would even establish such a trans-national law? Additionally, it's not even a custom. Many European heads of state and government endorsed Hillary in 2016 and they endorsed candidates in elections before then too.