German Elections & Politics

[freefair]

Dutch Labour. They're basically left-liberals and they just love coalitions with VVD, D66 and CDA.
Also, I perceive the Nordic SDs as being far to the economic right of UK Labour in historical policy terms, if more socialistic in theory.

[freefair]

Putin's coalition of the sympathetic fringes at it again (nationalists & radical leftist) . I'm sure if the rump FDP voters had been polled they'd have been even more against Putin, being the centre party & all.

[freefair]

Interesting new poll by FORSA for Baden-Württemberg (which will vote early next year):

38% CDU
  4% FDP
  4% AfD

Oyoyoy. Should be plenty of loan votes there!

[freefair]

   Klartext, agreed about problems with thresholds.  But, in the last federal election it was kind of like a perfect storm, where both FDP and AFD came so close to crossing the 5% line but just missed it.  Wonder how many right leaning voters who supported another party in that election regretted not helping the AFD over the finish line.

A 4% threshold seems like a more reasonable target to reach. The last election was won by the right, but one couldn't know that from the results.

[freefair]

Yeah, this is something people from countries with a sharp left/right divide often don't get about politics in countries like Germany or the Netherlands.

I'm quite aware that the FDP can go into coalition with the SPD, but that's certainly not in a way that is compatible with its current platform. Either way, disenfranchising 9.8% of the electorate, as happened in 2013, is unfair. Its not like 2 million list votes each is something to ignore in a PR system.