🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It is soooooooo painful hearing Germans attempt to pronounce Jamaica and horrendously fail at it.

I really wish that coalition could get some different nickname just for purely auditory reasons.

[Yeahsayyeah]

It is soooooooo painful hearing Germans attempt to pronounce Jamaica and horrendously fail at it.

I really wish that coalition could get some different nickname just for purely auditory reasons.

If Americans just stop to even pretend to try to pronounce German names, maybe... ;-)

Whoever is interested, can hear the semi-official German pronounciation following this link:

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Jamaika

[Astatine]

It is soooooooo painful hearing Germans attempt to pronounce Jamaica and horrendously fail at it.

I really wish that coalition could get some different nickname just for purely auditory reasons.

How about Americans pronouncing names of German districts?

- Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II
- Brandenburg an der Havel – Potsdam-Mittelmark I – Havelland III – Teltow-Fläming I
- Suhl – Schmalkalden-Meiningen – Hildburghausen – Sonneberg
- Eisenach – Wartburgkreis – Unstrut-Hainich-Kreis
- Saalfeld-Rudolstadt – Saale-Holzland-Kreis – Saale-Orla-Kreis
- Ludwigslust-Parchim II – Nordwestmecklenburg II – Landkreis Rostock I

[Yeahsayyeah]

To have fun with multi-party-system election results in big cities of the east aka party system fragmentation electric boogaloo, here ist the city of Dresden

SPD: 17,7 %
AfD: 17,6 %
Greens: 16,8 %
CDU: 14,5 %
FDP: 12,0%
Left: 11,1%
Animal Protection: 1,7 %
dieBasis (anti-anti-Covid-measures): 1,7 %
Free Voters: 1,7 %
PARTEI (parody party, quite young, left-wing electorate): 1,6 %
Pirates: 0,8 %
Others: 2,7 %

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It is soooooooo painful hearing Germans attempt to pronounce Jamaica and horrendously fail at it.

I really wish that coalition could get some different nickname just for purely auditory reasons.

If Americans just stop to even pretend to try to pronounce German names, maybe... ;-)

Not wrong. I was watching the Phoenix/ZDF election coverage yesterday that posters on this thread kindly linked to, and the American LA Times reporter that kept talking had horrendous German pronunciation. The French reporter had way better pronunciation.

Anyway, it seems to me that Red-Green-Yellow is most likely at this point.

Hopefully that means that the government focuses on leading the world in dealing with climate change in a robust way and is able to successfully cut CO2 emissions way down. SPD should promise to the greens that this will be the government's #1 focus, and that along with the fact that green voters strongly prefer SPD to CDU in a coalition I think will be enough to avoid Jamaica - even if the FDP somewhat prefers it, if the greens won't go along with Jamaica (and lack any incentive to prop up the CDU), then it is not going to happen.

This will have to be done in a "market friendly" way in order to keep the FDP in line, but nevertheless. Hopefully they can show the rest of the world that it can be done. And if they can show that it can be done in a way that parties like FDP can live with and even be happy with, then that will make it much more politically feasible in other countries as well, since then business lobbies/corporations in other countries will be more and more able to support strong action on climate. If that happens, I would even go so far as to call this election outcome as a blessing in disguise.

That is my hope, anyway.

[Continential]

Some of the takes on this thread when the exit polls dropped

It's a well established tradition that every time a large European country has an election, the thread immediately gets bombarded with American teenagers' takes that make the regulars want to pull their hair out

Good idea not to be online on election night. I know that many people come here to learn and I am very happy to provide information to anyone who needs them, but I must say that the one take that the FDP might form a coalition under their chancellorship if both Union and SPD fail to form a majority is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on this thread.

The only take worse than that was someone saying that there should be a SPD-FDP-Die Linke coalition.

[jaichind]

I assume dieBasis cut into the AfD vote ?

[parochial boy]

Neoliberalism means nothing today and the title of austerity fanatic is applied too broadly. The FDP isn't some austerity obsessed culture are you try to paint it but rather the true practioners of Keynsian Economics. Surplus in times of economic booms should be saved to be spent when times are bad, but the Groko parties have instead created massive giveaways to their pet counstieuncies such as lowering the retirement age, creating illegal road taxes or uncounstional rent control.

The problem is that the lack of investment comes from a rigid bureaucratic and regulatory system created with good intentions by the greens and SPD to protect the environment to essneitatly magnify the cost of any construction or development tenfold through bureaucracy and delays. The CDU and CSU have also supported this system because it lets them resist any project that might threaten the status quo. The FDP is the only party willing to take on the entrenched interests and reform thi system.

You accuse the FDP to being wedded to bad ideas but I would argue that applies far more to the greens and SPD who both refuse to admit it was a mistake to demand and immediate end to all nuclear power in germany(essentially  destroying 2 decades of progress towards decarbonizations) leading to a rise of coal power. The RRG goverment in berlin has complelty failied to solve the problem of rising rents and poor economic perfomance of the city, instead of biting the bullet and realzing they need to build more houses to cope with their growing population they have resorted to populist nonsense like the latest non-binding referedum.

The FDP is not perfect and does have ideological baggage but at least they're pointing in the right direction and asking the right questions.

"Neoliberalism means nothing" is a buzzphrase that is pulled out by people who don't want to accept its ideological failures - just because the defintion isn't precise does not mean it means nothing. In fact I dare you to find a single person who doesn't have some conception of what it means, and everyone is going to have a conception pointing in the same direction.

I mean, I don't want to repeat myself. Everytime I have seen Lindner speak he has been talking about "sorting out the public finances" and stuff along that line despite the fact that Germany does not have a problem with it's public finances, has had a decade of record low interest rates, that a budget surplus is a tactic that should be used for specific circumstances and absolutely not be a guiding principle, even during periods economic growth*, and especially not now; and more than that, setting fiscal discipline as the guiding goal has led to to a decade of pain in Europe and decades of degradation of Germany's infrastructure. These are all things you can't really argue against, are the result of a CDU government and the budget surpluses and restrictive monetary policies are precisely envisged by the FDP.

And guess what, all that has caused a lot more harm than the R2G coalition in Berlin's antics - especially when the issues around housing are structural - linked to how the German and global economies have developed and would also only be made worse by a liberalisation of both the housing market and the economy (ask any Londoner).

The FDP are not Keynesian in that respect, their arguments generally come down to "we will create the best conditions for the market and investors to participate in". Keynesians recognise the requirement for deficit spending and for an active state to invest in the economy. The FDP think the market will do that by itself - as seen in the insistance the cap and trade will somehow solve the lack of renewable energy or the reliance on road freight. And I am not anti-nuclear, but as things stand, it would take 15 years to get it back in place, so is not really an option if you think the climate is an issue that needs to be addressed now. Moaning about what the CDU did in the past isn't going to make that magically any different. Add to that, the reason cap and trade has failed at the EU level is precisely because large companies have learned how to game it for a profit and the system has merely wound up benefitting big companies at the expense of smaller ones. So Climate Change really won't solve itself without the sort of active state the FDP are opposed to.

So no, they are pointing in precisely the wrong direction - their response to the key economic and social challenges facing Germany is to do more of what has gone wrong over the last two decades, except do it better? Come on

* Two points are relevant here - one is that the UK ran a budget deficit consistently from the 1940s to the 70s and reduced it's publid debt from over 200% to aound 40% of it's GDP during that time. The second is that the country with the best public finances in the EU in the run up to the sovereign debt crisis was... Spain. Did that help it at all when things went up? no. We have honestly moved beyond the FDP's argument that budget surpluses should be held up as some economic target

[Yeahsayyeah]

I assume dieBasis cut into the AfD vote ?

Probably a bit, although the losses of the AfD are bigger than the vote share of dieBasis. On the other hand, anger about anti-covid-measures in parts of the populuation probably helped them keeping their votes together.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The "Neoliberalism means nothing" canard is especially rich coming from someone who's so obviously LARPing as the most bog-standard caricature of a neoliberal. You know exactly what it means my dude.

[Sir Mohamed]

Which coalition is now most likely to happen? My reading is FDP wants with the Union and Grune with SPD. One of them has to blink, potentially in exchange for lots of concessions?

I find it kind of hilarious Mr. Lashet hasn't resigned after losing 9 pts. CDU was just strong because of Merkel and they just expected to win, didn't they?

[Former President tack50]

To have fun with multi-party-system election results in big cities of the east aka party system fragmentation electric boogaloo, here ist the city of Dresden

SPD: 17,7 %
AfD: 17,6 %
Greens: 16,8 %
CDU: 14,5 %
FDP: 12,0%
Left: 11,1%
Animal Protection: 1,7 %
dieBasis (anti-anti-Covid-measures): 1,7 %
Free Voters: 1,7 %
PARTEI (parody party, quite young, left-wing electorate): 1,6 %
Pirates: 0,8 %
Others: 2,7 %

I now wonder how a precinct map of Dresden would look like

[Astatine]

Asked on what FDP and Greens have in common, Baerbock responded that her, Habeck and Lindner all are of about the same age and like to eat ice cream sometimes.

On a more serious note, she stated that there are many similarities on the issues of civil rights, digital affairs and cannabis. The first talks will be somewhat more informal to establish a confidential atmosphere, else coalition negotiations would be doomed to fail from beginning on.

Habeck and Baerbock repeatedly stated they prefer a traffic light coalition, while FDP had stated before that on the issues, Jamaica would be their preferred option. But with increasing pressure on Laschet and CDU/CSU sliding into a chaotic turmoil questioning Laschet's leadership, traffic light appears to be the more likely option as of now.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Neoliberalism means nothing today and the title of austerity fanatic is applied too broadly. The FDP isn't some austerity obsessed culture are you try to paint it but rather the true practioners of Keynsian Economics. Surplus in times of economic booms should be saved to be spent when times are bad, but the Groko parties have instead created massive giveaways to their pet counstieuncies such as lowering the retirement age, creating illegal road taxes or uncounstional rent control.

The problem is that the lack of investment comes from a rigid bureaucratic and regulatory system created with good intentions by the greens and SPD to protect the environment to essneitatly magnify the cost of any construction or development tenfold through bureaucracy and delays. The CDU and CSU have also supported this system because it lets them resist any project that might threaten the status quo. The FDP is the only party willing to take on the entrenched interests and reform thi system.

You accuse the FDP to being wedded to bad ideas but I would argue that applies far more to the greens and SPD who both refuse to admit it was a mistake to demand and immediate end to all nuclear power in germany(essentially  destroying 2 decades of progress towards decarbonizations) leading to a rise of coal power. The RRG goverment in berlin has complelty failied to solve the problem of rising rents and poor economic perfomance of the city, instead of biting the bullet and realzing they need to build more houses to cope with their growing population they have resorted to populist nonsense like the latest non-binding referedum.

The FDP is not perfect and does have ideological baggage but at least they're pointing in the right direction and asking the right questions.

"Neoliberalism means nothing" is a buzzphrase that is pulled out by people who don't want to accept its ideological failures - just because the defintion isn't precise does not mean it means nothing. In fact I dare you to find a single person who doesn't have some conception of what it means, and everyone is going to have a conception pointing in the same direction.

I mean, I don't want to repeat myself. Everytime I have seen Lindner speak he has been talking about "sorting out the public finances" and stuff along that line despite the fact that Germany does not have a problem with it's public finances, has had a decade of record low interest rates, that a budget surplus is a tactic that should be used for specific circumstances and absolutely not be a guiding principle, even during periods economic growth*, and especially not now; and more than that, setting fiscal discipline as the guiding goal has led to to a decade of pain in Europe and decades of degradation of Germany's infrastructure. These are all things you can't really argue against, are the result of a CDU government and the budget surpluses and restrictive monetary policies are precisely envisged by the FDP.

And guess what, all that has caused a lot more harm than the R2G coalition in Berlin's antics - especially when the issues around housing are structural - linked to how the German and global economies have developed and would also only be made worse by a liberalisation of both the housing market and the economy (ask any Londoner).

The FDP are not Keynesian in that respect, their arguments generally come down to "we will create the best conditions for the market and investors to participate in". Keynesians recognise the requirement for deficit spending and for an active state to invest in the economy. The FDP think the market will do that by itself - as seen in the insistance the cap and trade will somehow solve the lack of renewable energy or the reliance on road freight. And I am not anti-nuclear, but as things stand, it would take 15 years to get it back in place, so is not really an option if you think the climate is an issue that needs to be addressed now. Moaning about what the CDU did in the past isn't going to make that magically any different. Add to that, the reason cap and trade has failed at the EU level is precisely because large companies have learned how to game it for a profit and the system has merely wound up benefitting big companies at the expense of smaller ones. So Climate Change really won't solve itself without the sort of active state the FDP are opposed to.

So no, they are pointing in precisely the wrong direction - their response to the key economic and social challenges facing Germany is to do more of what has gone wrong over the last two decades, except do it better? Come on

* Two points are relevant here - one is that the UK ran a budget deficit consistently from the 1940s to the 70s and reduced it's publid debt from over 200% to aound 40% of it's GDP during that time. The second is that the country with the best public finances in the EU in the run up to the sovereign debt crisis was... Spain. Did that help it at all when things went up? no. We have honestly moved beyond the FDP's argument that budget surpluses should be held up as some economic target

What ideolgical failiure ? The world is(pre-pandemic) more prosperous and less poor than at any time it has been at the past. Income mobility is higher than ever while queer and minority communities are getting more rights and social acceptance than they have ever had before. Smeared neo-liberal reforms have been the bedrock of Germany's recent economic success and prosperity.Neoliberalism is ill-defined because there is no coherent label attached to the policies it put forths other some sort of vague status quo for populists of various stripes to rile against.

Germany's long-term financial system is not sustainable with a declining population and hence a declining tax base due to the structure of the pension system. Germany has been unable to save a sustainable sum for its surplus due to the various government parties attempting to push for the increased funding to be diverted to their own pet policies while the german state is unable to create large-scale infrastructure with any realistic sum of money due to bureaucratic obstacles place in front of it. That is the problem with public Finance that Linder talks about.

The problem with housing in London and Berlin are simple, the cities are no longer benighted with economic decline, pollution and other issues liked they used to be in decades past and are instead attractive growing places attracting immigrants causing a growing problem. The cities simply have not been able to build enough housing to keep pace with the growth of population and leftists attempts to find scape goats in land lords or nebulous foreign property owners intentional keeping houses empty("for the evils presumpably given the obvious stupidity of leaving a house empty in one of the worlds most expensive property markets").In the absence of more housing with a growing population, the price of rent will increase as any introductory economic course will tell you.

Social housing schemes like those implemented in Vienna or my native Singapore essentially subsidized housing for one class of person at the expense of another class. In Vienna, it creases a parallel property market where established well-off residents have aquired valuable property for far below their market value while newcomers to the city struggle in an expensive private rental market without much support. In Singapore, this is accomplished by a large foreign worker population of around 40% some who work for terrible pay in order to bring down the cost of construction and while other richer ones contribute taxes towards subsidizing homeownership while lacking access to any of those schemes.

The reason construction has not kept up with the incoming immigration to the cities is that established property owners have been able to block new construction to avoid inconvenience to themselves and to drive up their own property value. This has taken both conservative and leftists forms, but it's clear that the left-wing parties are unable to solve this problem at the root cause due to a hostility to market partipation.

Cap and trade has not solved all the climate problems at the European level simply because it hasn't been capped at low enough level as well as far too many loopholes created to allow emission. This isn't a knock against cap and trade anymore as any approach to solving climate change would face the issues . Solving climate change requires bringing carbon emissions down and setting a cap on emissions is the most sensible startagey. Allowing those caps to be auctioned off to generate revenue and sold is also sensible in order to find the way to reduce carbon emissions the most while minimizing the impact on our lifestyles.

Sadly the Green party is too captured by those who see climate change as a moral dilemma that has to be solved by tokenistic policies like speed limits and aeroplane taxes that they fail to appreciate that any acceptable solution has to be solving climate change while minimizing the impact on peoples lives and prosperity.

Honestly, your last two sentences are very telling, the last 2 decades have been some of the best times to ever live in Germany. It's been an unprecedented time of prosperity, security and stability. To act as if it's some lost decade is strange.

The "Neoliberalism means nothing" canard is especially rich coming from someone who's so obviously LARPing as the most bog-standard caricature of a neoliberal. You know exactly what it means my dude.

What is it with all these personal insults and isinutations?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Which coalition is now most likely to happen? My reading is FDP wants with the Union and Grune with SPD. One of them has to blink, potentially in exchange for lots of concessions?

I find it kind of hilarious Mr. Lashet hasn't resigned after losing 9 pts. CDU was just strong because of Merkel and they just expected to win, didn't they?

I'd say SPD-Greens-FDP is somewhat more likely, but who knows. Unlike 2017 the arguments for Jamaica are less strong because the CDU is now weaker than the SPD and - directly connected to that - Laschet is way more unpopular than Merkel (or Scholz). A case could be made that Traffic light must happen to prevent the ascension of what could arguably be Germany's most incompetent post-war Chancellor. I guess the FDP knows that too, that's why they started to sound slightly less adamant about Jamaica today. Of course there's always the wildcard scenario that Laschet gets terminated and the "Jamaica with Söder" plot twist occurs. However, they also seem to be some more realistic voices in the CDU who argue that the party needs to go into the opposition now.

In case of traffic light, SPD and Greens would of course need to make a lot of concessions to the FDP despite the fact (or shall we rather say "because") that the Lindner party is the weakest one in such a government... kind of a reverse of the 2017 Jamaica negotiations where the CDU was willing to make A LOT of concessions to Greens which in turn led to the FDP blowing up the talks. This essentially means no new taxes/social welfare and Lindner is the new finance minister.

Given all these complexities, FDP and Greens have agreed to do something entirely new... they'll meet first without either SPD or CDU.

[KaiserDave]

Calling it! Exit polls is underestimating the SPD. Calling it! I have no information to determine this but I am calling it.

I will now accept my accolades!

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

It is soooooooo painful hearing Germans attempt to pronounce Jamaica and horrendously fail at it.

I really wish that coalition could get some different nickname just for purely auditory reasons.

There is already another term for Jamaica: Schwampel. But it never prevailed.

[Omega21]

(ask any Londoner).

You mean the London that's encircled by an impenetrable Green Belt?

That's hardly a good example of libertarian politics lol

I don't think there's a single example of sufficient housing regulation and bureaucracy cutting in the EU.

We have come to live with the expectation that planning and getting a building approved takes as long or longer than actually building it. Sprinkle in some ridiculous "green" standards into the mix, and you have beautiful, expensive, turtle speed construction.

[Antonio the Sixth]

In case of traffic light, SPD and Greens would of course need to make a lot of concessions to the FDP despite the fact (or shall we rather say "because") that the Lindner party is the weakest one in such a government... kind of a reverse of the 2017 Jamaica negotiations where the CDU was willing to make A LOT of concessions to Greens which in turn led to the FDP blowing up the talks. This essentially means no new taxes/social welfare and Lindner is the new finance minister.

So yep, Traffic Light is going to be a f**king disaster and an utter waste of political capital for SPD and the Greens. Wonderful.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Housing and planning issues are fascinating (if often wildly misunderstood), but I would suggest discussing them on a more appropriate thread than derailing this one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They have the actual map here: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2021-09/wahlergebnisse-bundestagswahl-2021-wahlkreise-karte-deutschland-live

Anyway, impressive how well CDU held up in North-Rhine-Westphalia, given that it was completely shut out of almost all of Northern Germany otherwise. This is a really strange-looking map by historical comparisons.

When the SPD draw level or hit a bit above the CDU, they pretty much always run rampant in terms of List vote leads* in Lower Saxony, which has a much more flexible electorate than NRW. Though what looks really weird on the list lead maps is the extraordinary CDU disaster in R-P, which I suspect may be flooding related...

_{*While the CDU generally end up holding - often rather comfortably - many of the more relatively rural constituencies where this is the case. Unterems is a great example: SPD with a 30pt share and a 4pt lead on the list, but the CDU held the direct seat by more than 15pts!}

[brucejoel99]

In case of traffic light, SPD and Greens would of course need to make a lot of concessions to the FDP despite the fact (or shall we rather say "because") that the Lindner party is the weakest one in such a government... kind of a reverse of the 2017 Jamaica negotiations where the CDU was willing to make A LOT of concessions to Greens which in turn led to the FDP blowing up the talks. This essentially means no new taxes/social welfare and Lindner is the new finance minister.

So yep, Traffic Light is going to be a f**king disaster and an utter waste of political capital for SPD and the Greens. Wonderful.

I will now accept my accolades:

What even is the point of the SPD anymore?

They did well....

This is a disaster for the Union...

Yeah, but the coalition options kinda suck for the SPD: assuming no Jamaica, either they continue the grand coalition with themselves as its leaders this time & thus further enable the erasure of their inherent political identity or they try to form a traffic-light coalition without R2G as negotiating leverage. Neither seems all that likely to lead to future successes for them.

[Antonio the Sixth]

In case of traffic light, SPD and Greens would of course need to make a lot of concessions to the FDP despite the fact (or shall we rather say "because") that the Lindner party is the weakest one in such a government... kind of a reverse of the 2017 Jamaica negotiations where the CDU was willing to make A LOT of concessions to Greens which in turn led to the FDP blowing up the talks. This essentially means no new taxes/social welfare and Lindner is the new finance minister.

So yep, Traffic Light is going to be a f**king disaster and an utter waste of political capital for SPD and the Greens. Wonderful.

I will now accept my accolades:

What even is the point of the SPD anymore?

They did well....

This is a disaster for the Union...

Yeah, but the coalition options kinda suck for the SPD: assuming no Jamaica, either they continue the grand coalition with themselves as its leaders this time & thus further enable the erasure of their inherent political identity or they try to form a traffic-light coalition without R2G as negotiating leverage. Neither seems all that likely to lead to future successes for them.

I maintain that continuing GroKo would be the right choice. There's a lot to criticize about the CDU (and I certainly have) but they're fundamentally a serious party of responsible adults, not a gaggle of entitled rich kids like the FDP.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

BBC: German election: Seven things we learned

The 8th point was in fact relevant for the election.
Because some polling station ran out of ballots, additional ballots had to be delivered subsequently, which however was fraught with difficulties, as the streets were congested owing to the Berlin Marathon.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Ellen Demuth, deputy leader of the CDU caucus in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, and Marcus Mündlein, head of the Young Union in Saxony, have both openly called for Laschet's resignation.