German Elections & Politics

[jeron]

Turnout in Thüringen until 12:00 was 20% (30% with postal ballots).

That is about the same as 5 years ago.

Final turnout then was 56%.

It was 18% last time. There are no exact numbers for Brandenburg, but turnout seems to be low there. At 14:00 turnout was 23.7% in Potsdam compared to 38.8% during the bundestag elections last year.

[jeron]

Oh, and the FDP really needs to stop being listed separately.

It is their worst result in Brandenburg. Their worst result so far was 1.9% in 1999. (In Thüringen they did worse that year, when they received only 1.1% of the vote). The FDP had a string of pretty bad results at the end of the nineties and they were only represented in four regional parliaments at that time, so maybe there is still hope for them?

[jeron]

Frank-Walter Steinmeier has just been chosen next Bundesprasident with 931 of 1253 votes.

[jeron]

Full results

1253 votes in total
931 votes for Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD, CDU, CSU, Greens and FDP)
128 votes for Christoph Butterwegge (The Left)
42 votes for Albrecht Glaser (AfD)
25 votes for Alexander Hold (Free Voters)
10 votes for Engelbert Sonneborn (Pirate Party)
103 abstentions
14 invalid votes

The AFD was quite happy with the result apparently, because their candidate got more votes than expected as there were only 35 voters belonging to the AFD. 8 votes probably came from CDU/CSU members. There were only 95 voters belonging to Die Linke, so a substantial part of the Greens probably voted for Butterwegge.

[jeron]

AfD at 15.2% in Gelsenkirchen II (that is the southern one of the two Gelsenkirchen constituencies).

Gelsenkirchen is an SPD stronghold and also one of the Ruhr area cities most affected by unemployment, child poverty, debt and Romania and Bulgaria disposing of unwanted subgroups of their population.

SPD down to 37.5% from 50% there

[jeron]

What about a Grand Coalition with the SPD supplier the premier?

I suppose that mathematically you could get a "Jamaica coalition" but given how the election is seen as a such a big rebuke to the CDU/FDP and Greens in the wake of a likely Jamaica coalition federally, i wonder if that combo would be seen as a bit of a "coalition of losers" 

Red/Green could still be possible at the end of the night. At this point it's 67 seats for red/green and 68 for the others.