🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Middle-aged Europe]

Overall, I'm very happy about the election result. I think Lindner's plan is to persuade Baerbock to enter government with his buddy Laschet, but if she's smart, she won't give in to that. I think it's now Scholz's turn to try and form a government.

Btw, as it was reported today by both FAZ and RND there was a super-secret agreement between Baerbock and Habeck in place that if the Greens fall below 17% in the election Habeck gets to be Vice-chancellor in a future government. Apparently, he's in charge now.... perhaps evidenced by the fact that he gave all the important press conferences and TV interviews today.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/bundestagswahl/bundestagswahl-gruene-wollen-robert-habeck-als-vizekanzler-haben-17557665.html

[crals]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

Immigration and animal rights both being straightforward political issues that a low information voter can get behind, I suppose

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Not sure if mentioned yet, but two transgender politicians were elected to the Bundestag for the first time ever: Nyke Slawik from NRW and Tessa Ganserer from Bavaria, both are members of the Greens.

While we're mentioning LGBT MPs, here are the homosexual members:

SPD: Lars Castellucci (BW), Falko Droßmann (HH) 😂, Timon Gremmels (HE), Carlos Kasper (SN), Kevin Kühnert (BE) 🤮, Matthias Miersch (NS), Michael Roth (HE)
CDU: Atlas favorite Jens Spahn (NRW)
Grüne: Bruno Hönel 🙄 (SH), Max Lucks (NRW), Sven Lehmann (NRW) 😒, Ulle Schauws (NRW), Marlene Schönberger (BY)
FDP: Jens Brandenburg, Konstantin Kuhle (NS), Thomas Sattelberger (BY)
AfD: Alice Weidel (BW), whose wife canvassed for the SSM referendum in Switzerland. (The couple lives there.)

Two homosexual MPs lost their mandate:
Christian Democrat Stefan Kaufmann, who lost his direct mandate from Stuttgart I against Cem Özdemir, and Linke politician Doris Achelwilm, who wasn't able to retain her list seat owing to the abysmal performance of her party.

Moreover, the Linke nominated an intersexual candidate, Heinrich Alexandra Hermann, for the constituency Schwarzwald-Baar, but he/she delivered the worst result out of all eight candidates.

[Astatine]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

Those fringe animal protection/ecological parties like Tierschutzpartei (TSP) or ÖDP often have some problems with being undermined by literal Nazis and other far-right extremists. The famous holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck was member of the ÖDP in its early phase, and some of the other animal protection parties like Tierschutzallianz have split from TSP because it was not distancing itself enough from those influences. That's the reason TSP lost its representation in the European Parliament quite quickly twice: The MEP for the 2014-2019 period, Stefan Eck, left the party for this reason and his successor, Martin Buschmann... left the TSP and the GUE/NGL group because it turned out he had been a local official for the NPD in the 90s.

crals has pointed out well that animal rights is a political issue low info voters care more about, and it definitely benefits them that their name directly implies what they stand for. For my hometown, I just skimmed the results and found that in areas with high unemployment, many migrants and generally lower formal education, AfD, Linke and TSP perform strongly, in the typical "middle-class" suburban areas their vote share drops while in more alternative and young quarters, Linke and TSP are stronger again (possibly also because of the lack of a Green list), with the AfD performing badly.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Currently walking home drunk with a currywurst, AMA

What was the mood like at the party you went to?

The party organizers chose to put RBB, the regional public broadcaster for Berlin-Brandenburg, on the screen, who in turn chose to show the exit poll showing the CDU and SPD tied at 25% each. The CDU number came on first, there was dead silence, following by some clapping when the SPD number came on, and then once all the parties were on the screen, there was some more clapping but also most people were probably like, "Welp, long night ahead".

Also there was a muted reaction to the first Berlin exit poll showing the Greens ahead, even if there was some relief at the initial projection of a Green-SPD majority in Berlin.

However, as the night went on, and the SPD lead grew, the crowd would cheer when it showed the SPD pulling ahead both nationally and on the state level. I got a good video of the crowd going nuts at around 18.45 when they showed the SPD up to 26% nationwide. It was reposted on Insta stories by some SPD accounts, so not to brag, but i'm kind of a big deal around here 😏😏😏

Aging out is a thing, but that alone doesn't explain Linke losing 2/3rds of their East Germany vote in 10 years.

Macroeconomy is much, much better in East Germany since 2013, with unemployment levels back to around or even below 5%. People voted for them when unemployment was 10-20%, but now things are "okay", and these voters are entertaining other options as well

Tbh I suspect the main reason unemployment has dropped in the East is because of people moving West.

I have a friend at work from Sachsen-Anhalt and he told me that most of the young people in his town have left either to move to Lepizig (closest major city) or to West Germany.

There is truth in this but to say that it is the main reason is misleading. There has been a real economic recovery in East Germany over the past 15 years; the economic adjustment took a very long time but it finally happened. In terms of living standards, income, unemployment, underemployment, healthcare, life expectancy, physical infrastructure, and productivity, the East has drastically closed the gap with the West compared to where it was in the 1990s, even if there is still a sizeable gap.

For example, the contribution of small businesses to the East German GDP converged on the EU average back in 2018, and the share of industry has already surpassed the EU average. Manufacturing, construction, IT, healthcare, and general services have all grown strongly over the past 8 years. Birth rates are also rebounding a bit. East Germany's urban centers have also surpassed many EU average figures over the past 6 years and many are already catching up to the West (Dresden, Jena, Rostock, Magdeburg, Berlin, Potsdam). The labor market is now, like the rest of the West, suffering from a lack of skilled labor.

There has been a trend over the past decade of some people retiring to the East to take advantage of the open landscapes, cheap property, and low cost of living, and now there does seem to be some instances of reverse-migration from the West to the East amongst all age groups due to economic and educational opportunities in the East that, despite lower salaries, make it worth it when accounting for much lower living costs. After having moved to Berlin from Stockholm, and traveling around East Germany myself, I completely understand why this is now an attractive thing. I was genuinely surprised at how nice Potsdam, Greifswald, Dresden, Rügen, Werder an der Havel, and much of Berlin is, since I had heard nothing but bad things about the East. One thing I did notice is that in many rural areas and small towns, there is a total lack of people between the ages of 20 and 50, but I would assume that an increasing number of young easterners are moving to cities in the East just as much as they would in the West.

Of course, East Germany still has a long way to go. There are still major deficits in innovation, entrepreneurship, wages, household wealth, and internationalization. Transport infrastructure now equals West Germany, but digital infrastructure is very behind (yes, even considering how behind Germany as a whole is here already). A big factor in East Germany's rapid wage growth since 2015 has been the introduction of the minimum wage, showing that a much larger percentage of the workforce here works for minimum wage or near-minimum wage jobs.

But it is certainly not the 90s, certainly not the 2000s, and not even the early-2010s anymore.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

Animal welfare and environmental protection go hand in hand with conservative values.
Most foresters are archconservative.
Adolf Hitler, Attila Hildmann and Brigitte Bardot are staunch vegans.
The Tierschutzallianz, btw, is an openly right-wing party.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Currently walking home drunk with a currywurst, AMA

What was the mood like at the party you went to?

The party organizers chose to put RBB, the regional public broadcaster for Berlin-Brandenburg, on the screen, who in turn chose to show the exit poll showing the CDU and SPD tied at 25% each. The CDU number came on first, there was dead silence, following by some clapping when the SPD number came on, and then once all the parties were on the screen, there was some more clapping but also most people were probably like, "Welp, long night ahead".

Also there was a muted reaction to the first Berlin exit poll showing the Greens ahead, even if there was some relief at the initial projection of a Green-SPD majority in Berlin.

However, as the night went on, and the SPD lead grew, the crowd would cheer when it showed the SPD pulling ahead both nationally and on the state level. I got a good video of the crowd going nuts at around 18.45 when they showed the SPD up to 26% nationwide. It was reposted on Insta stories by some SPD accounts, so not to brag, but i'm kind of a big deal around here 😏😏😏

Nice to see you had a nice time!
Were you able to bring your SPD party flag with you?

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Overall, I'm very happy about the election result. I think Lindner's plan is to persuade Baerbock to enter government with his buddy Laschet, but if she's smart, she won't give in to that. I think it's now Scholz's turn to try and form a government.

Btw, as it was reported today by both FAZ and RND there was a super-secret agreement between Baerbock and Habeck in place that if the Greens fall below 17% in the election Habeck gets to be Vice-chancellor in a future government. Apparently, he's in charge now.... perhaps evidenced by the fact that he gave all the important press conferences and TV interviews today.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/bundestagswahl/bundestagswahl-gruene-wollen-robert-habeck-als-vizekanzler-haben-17557665.html

Wouldn't it be a smarter move by Habeck to become governor of Schleswig-Holstein? The Greens are constantly leading in the polls, and Habeck just won his constituency very surprisingly.

[Astatine]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

Animal welfare and environmental protection go hand in hand with conservative values.
Most foresters are archconservative.
Adolf Hitler, Attila Hildmann and Brigitte Bardot are staunch vegans.
The Tierschutzallianz, btw, is an openly right-wing party.

Then I mixed them up with Tierschutz hier! or however the People's Front of Judea is calling itself now.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

Animal welfare and environmental protection go hand in hand with conservative values.
Most foresters are archconservative.
Adolf Hitler, Attila Hildmann and Brigitte Bardot are staunch vegans.
The Tierschutzallianz, btw, is an openly right-wing party.

Then I mixed them up with Tierschutz hier! or however the People's Front of Judea is calling itself now.

Maybe I'm mixing them up. I just remembered that there are the animal welfare parties. Two of them are slightly conservative, the third one is very right-wing. When you mentioned Saxony-Anhalt I assumed that the Tierschutzallianz was the right-wing party.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

After I read some replies in this thread, it is important to become clear:

Die Linke IS NOT the former communists of the DDR. Die Linke was born as a merge of the PDS, which was the sucessor of the SED, and the WASG, a left-wing group that was a split of the SPD. The PDS itself was not like the SED. A minority in the PDS considered that the DDR was a very nice country.
Many Linke leaders weren't adults when the wall came down in 1989.
The SED was in the "authoritarian left" square of the political compass. Die Linke is in the "libertarian left" square. This party supported the legalization of the cannabis before all the SPD did it. Die Linke tries to be greener than the Greens, while the DDR didn't have a very good record in environment protection.
The 2021 polls showed that die Linke had 8% of the <24 vote and 4% of the >60 vote. It looks like that the old eastern Linke voters became very rare now.

Die Linke did very well in 2009, when few people had heard about Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, Melechon, Pablo Iglesias and Alexis Tsipras. Germany was ahead of other high income countries in options on the left of the mainstream center-left. In the end of the 2010s, die Linke declined.

Would you consider it acceptable if only a "minority" of the AfD thought Nazi Germany was a very nice country?

[parochial boy]

The Tierschutzpartei got over 2% in Berlin (with its strongest results in East Berlin), Saarland (no Greens), Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It got 1,9% in Saxony and together with the Tierschutzallianz 2,3% in Saxony-Anhalt. In the old Länder it was consistently stuck around 1-1,5%.

Seems a trivial point - but - I've noticed in the past that the French Parti Animaliste gets its best scores in the north and east of the country where RN is also as it's strongest. and I'm pretty sure the same pattern applies with the PvdD in Holland.

In which case it seems actually worth remarking on the way this phenomena keeps on popping up - has anyone actually ever looked into it in detail?

Those fringe animal protection/ecological parties like Tierschutzpartei (TSP) or ÖDP often have some problems with being undermined by literal Nazis and other far-right extremists. The famous holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck was member of the ÖDP in its early phase, and some of the other animal protection parties like Tierschutzallianz have split from TSP because it was not distancing itself enough from those influences. That's the reason TSP lost its representation in the European Parliament quite quickly twice: The MEP for the 2014-2019 period, Stefan Eck, left the party for this reason and his successor, Martin Buschmann... left the TSP and the GUE/NGL group because it turned out he had been a local official for the NPD in the 90s.

crals has pointed out well that animal rights is a political issue low info voters care more about, and it definitely benefits them that their name directly implies what they stand for. For my hometown, I just skimmed the results and found that in areas with high unemployment, many migrants and generally lower formal education, AfD, Linke and TSP perform strongly, in the typical "middle-class" suburban areas their vote share drops while in more alternative and young quarters, Linke and TSP are stronger again (possibly also because of the lack of a Green list), with the AfD performing badly.

Yeah I figure it would be a protest vote. Skimming through their Wikipedia page, they still seem to wind up with pretty progressive positions overall. Pro-ish refugees, universal basic income, ban arms exports, cancel third world debt and all the homeopathy and other dark green stuff you would expect. But at the same time, not surprising it gets a bunch of neo-nazis too.

I guess if I was to hazard a guess at the median TSP voter it would be a 20-40 something woman without much education (works as a hairdresser, indulging my brutally shallow stereotype) in a small-middle sized town who doesn’t follow and is disillusioned with politics, but also likely environmentalist, vegetarian or vegan, likes animals etc… probably a slightly crass summary, but I imagine there are enough people like that around who would tend to see the appeal of such a party as a receptacle for a protest vote.

[Alcibiades]

To put into perspective just how historically bad this result is for the Union, not only did they get their lowest vote share ever, but this election also saw their lowest ever raw vote total after only 1949. Humiliating considering that the pre-reunification Federal Republic only had a population of 50-60 million.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Overall, I'm very happy about the election result. I think Lindner's plan is to persuade Baerbock to enter government with his buddy Laschet, but if she's smart, she won't give in to that. I think it's now Scholz's turn to try and form a government.

Btw, as it was reported today by both FAZ and RND there was a super-secret agreement between Baerbock and Habeck in place that if the Greens fall below 17% in the election Habeck gets to be Vice-chancellor in a future government. Apparently, he's in charge now.... perhaps evidenced by the fact that he gave all the important press conferences and TV interviews today.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/bundestagswahl/bundestagswahl-gruene-wollen-robert-habeck-als-vizekanzler-haben-17557665.html

Wouldn't it be a smarter move by Habeck to become governor of Schleswig-Holstein? The Greens are constantly leading in the polls, and Habeck just won his constituency very surprisingly.

The Greens have so far only led in two polls in S-H and that was around the time they also had 26% in federal polls back in May this year.

Also, I doubt that Habeck considers it appealing to go back to the nethers of provincial politics when he has the opportunity of playing in the big league.

[RodPresident]

Would SPD campaigning on R2G than Traffic Light of Red Green help to take anti-establishment voters from AFD to Linke as they would give perspective of change to those voters?

[Astatine]

Would SPD campaigning on R2G than Traffic Light of Red Green help to take anti-establishment voters from AFD to Linke as they would give perspective of change to those voters?

If the SPD had been campaigning on R2G, that would've been exactly what the CDU wanted. Over 1 million CDU voters went from CDU to SPD, mostly because they like Scholz' pragmatism and moderate perception and would not have anything against a traffic light coalition, but Die Linke is toxic to those kind of voters.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

maybe a different color scheme for AfD? I know which is which but outside observers might wonder why the AfD is winning in Berlin.

[Oryxslayer]

maybe a different color scheme for AfD? I know which is which but outside observers might wonder why the AfD is winning in Berlin.

The correct option is greys for union, blues for AfD, but I understand if that is undesirable because of black borders.

[Devout Centrist]

maybe a different color scheme for AfD? I know which is which but outside observers might wonder why the AfD is winning in Berlin.

We could always use their historical color scheme...

[Zinneke]

So how come Pankow swung to the Greens while places like Treptow stayed Die Linke? Is Pankow really now more gentrified than south east Berlin?

[Yeahsayyeah]

After I read some replies in this thread, it is important to become clear:

Die Linke IS NOT the former communists of the DDR. Die Linke was born as a merge of the PDS, which was the sucessor of the SED, and the WASG, a left-wing group that was a split of the SPD. The PDS itself was not like the SED. A minority in the PDS considered that the DDR was a very nice country.
Many Linke leaders weren't adults when the wall came down in 1989.
The SED was in the "authoritarian left" square of the political compass. Die Linke is in the "libertarian left" square. This party supported the legalization of the cannabis before all the SPD did it. Die Linke tries to be greener than the Greens, while the DDR didn't have a very good record in environment protection.
The 2021 polls showed that die Linke had 8% of the <24 vote and 4% of the >60 vote. It looks like that the old eastern Linke voters became very rare now.

Die Linke did very well in 2009, when few people had heard about Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, Melechon, Pablo Iglesias and Alexis Tsipras. Germany was ahead of other high income countries in options on the left of the mainstream center-left. In the end of the 2010s, die Linke declined.

Would you consider it acceptable if only a "minority" of the AfD thought Nazi Germany was a very nice country?

Well, that's probably right. A majortiy prefers a caricature of the FRG of the early fifties or of the Empire as the place to go...

[Middle-aged Europe]

So how come Pankow swung to the Greens while places like Treptow stayed Die Linke? Is Pankow really now more gentrified than south east Berlin?

A large part of the borough of Pankow is Prenzlauer Berg and there is probably no Greener region than that. Also, Pankow never really was much of a traditional Left stronghold. Stefan Liebich won the borough three times, but he was also more of a modern/younger Left Party politician and before that it had been a SPD stonghold.

Actually, it's far more baffling that Marzahn-Hellersdorf - which had voted for PDS/Left in every single election since 1990 - went CDU this time. The AfD has cutting hard into the Left's populist vote share there, but it can't be the only explanation.

[Yeahsayyeah]

So how come Pankow swung to the Greens while places like Treptow stayed Die Linke? Is Pankow really now more gentrified than south east Berlin?

A large part of the borough of Pankow is Prenzlauer Berg and there is probably no Greener region than that. Also, Pankow never really was much of a traditional Left stronghold. Stefan Liebich won the borough three times, but he was also more of a modern/younger Left Party politician and before that it had been a SPD stonghold.

Actually, it's far more baffling that Marzahn-Hellersdorf - which had voted for PDS/Left in every single election since 1990 - went CDU this time. The AfD has cutting hard into the Left's populist vote share there, but it can't be the only explanation.

Seems to be a localist thing. The CDU candidate increased the district vote vote share by 7 per cent while the list vote share dropped by 4.5 per cent. So he beat his party vote share by 13 per cent. He was directly elected to the state parliament for the Mahlsdorf and Kaulsdorf area before. Mahrzahn-Hellersdorf isn't as dominated by "Plattenbau" estates as outsiders tend to believe. There are huge swaths of settlements with one- and two-family-housing.

[Middle-aged Europe]

After a Green-FDP summit had been scheduled for tomorrow, the SPD is starting to get impatient now and demands meetings of all three parties this week.

What's happening in the CDU in the meantime? Dunno... it seems Laschet is busy trying to remain party chairman. Also, there's also a possible fight over the position of the CDU/CSU caucus leader in the Bundestag. Incumbent Ralph Brinkhaus wants to run again, but others have started to argue that this election should at least be postponed.