🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Why's that? I get he's conservative, but is there anyone else left? I don't think picking Laschet in order to own Merz was a particularly smart choice on the CDU's part.

Merz's personal following is surely larger than that of Laschet, but it's not huge. He is quite a controversial figure and has many people against him.

But you're right-- the CDU is obviously lacking alternatives.
Jens Spahn, who was heralded at the beginning of the legislative term as the young conservative maverick of the CDU, is surely ambitious, but his performance as health minister has been widely criticized. Many scandals and baggage surrounding him.
Norbert Röttgen, who gained a respectable 20 percent of the delegate vote for leader last time, might want to try again. I get the feeling that he had a motivated online following last time. He wanted to modernize the CDU, make it more aggressive on climate change. He has a shot but must somehow make an offer to the Merz-wing of the party.
Daniel Günther, the prime minister of Schleswig-Holstein, is fairly young and fairly popular. I think he has the format for a national party leader.
Unfortunately for the CDU, technology is not advanced enough for Söder to clone himself.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Unfortunately for the CDU, technology is not advanced enough for Söder to clone himself.

Isn't there also a risk with Söder that he comes off as too Bavaria-focused? He seems awfully like the kind of Bavarian who would get on everyone else's nerves after a while, but maybe that is a personal prejudice.

Anyways, the new INSA map of directly-elected seats is glorious:


Just incredible how the SPD would slaughter the CDU in directly-elected seats, a total change from the last three election cycles and not unlike the 1998 - 2005 period:

[Battista Minola 1616]

The maps just posted by Clarko are really nice, thank you. One could discuss about the potential breadth of this year's SPD strength, but in all honesty most of all they seem to be goading one into a conversation about "What's the matter with Saxony?".

[President Johnson]

That map is really insane. Especially the SPD taking all districts in Saxony Anhalt after the disastrous results of the state election in June.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

The maps just posted by Clarko are really nice, thank you. One could discuss about the potential breadth of this year's SPD strength, but in all honesty most of all they seem to be goading one into a conversation about "What's the matter with Saxony?".

Well i'm glad you asked, Battista Minola. I had the same questions, and did some reading up in both English and German and came across some arguments put forth by journalists, political scientists, politicians, and academics.

I'm not informed enough about what is actually true or not, or what should get the most weigh, so it would be great if the the Germany experts could confirm/refute/discuss:

• 1. Saxony was an independent kingdom that was involved in a lot of wars, and this led to an insular and rebellious culture in the state. During the days of the German empire, there was a lot of resentment towards Prussia. This can still be seen today in the "we don't want Berlin telling us what to do" attitude.
• 2. During the Weimar period, the political left and right were constantly one-upping each other in extremism. While the SPD and KPD formed a government in 1923, they were promptly overthrown by a radicalized right-of-centre, and thereafter the SPD formed a weak coalition government with the DDP and DVP.
• 3. The lack of Catholics and respective political Catholicism meant that there was no moderating force like Zentrum, which sought political compromise and stability. The strongest parties were the KPD, SPD, and later NSDAP, with the liberals and Zentrum marginalized for the most part (relates to #2).
  
• 4. Saxony had both a large industrial base and also a large rural population. The conflict between the urban left and the conservative bourgeoisie was particularly nasty and heated (see #2 and #3).
  
• 5. Refugees from Silesia could also play a role here after being expelled in WWII. Breslau, like Dresden, was also a very pro-Nazi city and it doesn't seem like a stretch to believe that people carried national conservative views and bitterness over the loss of their homeland with them westwards.
  
• 6. the GDR sought to associate fascism with imperialism and capitalism, and disassociated socialism with anything that happend before 1945, and so never went through the process of working through the past with open debate like what happened in West Germany. This obviously is not exclusive to Saxony so it's not too helpful in explaining why Saxony is so extreme compared to the other Eastern states, but it is one part of the puzzle.
  
• 7. One author posits that there has been a strong anti-democratic tradition in Saxony dating back over a century, which relates to #1, #2, #4, #5, and I guess #3 as well?
  
• 8. After reunification, the right-of-centre parties always had at least 54% in every election combined (centre-right to far-right). The state CDU chapter, however, never sought to introduce a culture of public remembrance and historical reflection, like what the rest of the CDU in the country actively cultivates. The state CDU also quietly embraced right-wing currents and showed little concern about them over the past 30 years. Unfortunately for them now, about half of their past voters are now embracing the right-wing/far-right.
  
• 9. Saxony also is unusual in the East for its strong network of "free comradeship" organizations (basically brotherhoods and civic organizations), which primarily tend to be a West German thing and are nothing special in the West. But in the East, the GDR suppressed most non-communist organizations, but Saxony escaped this. So one political scientist argues this is both a symptom and a cause of Saxon insularity (self-reinforcing cycle), and this magnifies far-right views
  
• 10. Apparently the state level NPD also intentionally tried to cultivate an image of being "normal" and not a bunch of skinheads wearing army boots. The NPD had three very strong election results at the state level in 2004 (9.2%!!!), 2009 (6%), and 2014 (4.95%).
  
• 11. an interesting quote regarding Dresden, translated from German:
  
  

  "Dresden is the city of culture with the largest horizon", there's something to this saying, isn't it? In other words, there is too much self-centeredness here. The city is politically conservative. It's different in Leipzig. Leipzig is a city of trade, of trade fairs, already comparatively cosmopolitan in GDR times and surprisingly multicultural even today for Eastern standards. That shapes the climate. Right-wing populist, right-wing extremist and national-conservative positions are more effective in Dresden than in Leipzig. The Pegida movement also began as a Dresden phenomenon."

Would appreciate it if some of ze Tschörmanns could chime in here

[Astatine]

I feel the INSA district forecast heavily underestimates CDU/CSU. I was actually polled by INSA/YouGov for exactly this poll on which the current forecast is based on, but INSA doesn't ask for a district vote preference. Somewhat bogus on how they calculate their district predictions, I suspect INSA just takes the proportional vote from the poll, weighs it for state and socio-economical factors and adjusts it with district/proportional voting patterns from the most recent general election. Going beyond 2013 would cause severe methodological flaws, since until then, overhang seats were not compensated.

Many local CDU/CSU campaigners still strongly advertise for their district candidates since they gave up on Laschet, so I doubt the district vote for CDU/CSU will be as horrible as their proportional result. Remember that much of the current FDP electorate is just borrowed CDU/CSU voters, who might still opt for their local Union candidate. FDP didn't even exceed 10 % of the district vote in 2009, when they got 14.6 % as a record result.
In fact, I could actually see CDU/CSU becoming largest party for the district vote.

Maybe I'm wrong and INSA will have been right all along and accounted for some factors I couldn't think of, but their predictions should really be taken with a grain of salt as of now.

Although election.de's methodology isn't transparent either, their forecasts seem more plausible to me:



And they have Lean/Likely/Safe probability ratings instead of weird leads.

[Lechasseur]

Why's that? I get he's conservative, but is there anyone else left? I don't think picking Laschet in order to own Merz was a particularly smart choice on the CDU's part.

Merz's personal following is surely larger than that of Laschet, but it's not huge. He is quite a controversial figure and has many people against him.

But you're right-- the CDU is obviously lacking alternatives.
Jens Spahn, who was heralded at the beginning of the legislative term as the young conservative maverick of the CDU, is surely ambitious, but his performance as health minister has been widely criticized. Many scandals and baggage surrounding him.
Norbert Röttgen, who gained a respectable 20 percent of the delegate vote for leader last time, might want to try again. I get the feeling that he had a motivated online following last time. He wanted to modernize the CDU, make it more aggressive on climate change. He has a shot but must somehow make an offer to the Merz-wing of the party.
Daniel Günther, the prime minister of Schleswig-Holstein, is fairly young and fairly popular. I think he has the format for a national party leader.
Unfortunately for the CDU, technology is not advanced enough for Söder to clone himself.

Yeah Spahn's done. I think he's alienated everyone in one way or another at this point (first by alienating the party's rightwing by trying to be their guy but then always endorsing the centrist candidate in the runoff, and now everyone else with his performance as health minister). He'd probably be no better than Laschet, and doesn't seem to stand for anything either.

Rottgen could be interesting. I did think to myself that he'd probably make a better leader than the likes of Laschet or AKK back at the time, and I think he may well be winning now if he was the party leader now. Rottgen from what I could tell was a centrist in the good and interesting sense of the term.

And for Gunther, I don't know much about him but I think I've heard that he's about the most "liberal" (in an American sense) major CDU politician, is that correct?

But yeah, with what I was saying just above, I think the petty politics by the likes of Spahn and other CDU barons in going for the likes of AKK and Laschet just to "own" and "trigger" the likes of Rottgen and Merz is basically what brought the CDU into this situation.

[parochial boy]

The maps just posted by Clarko are really nice, thank you. One could discuss about the potential breadth of this year's SPD strength, but in all honesty most of all they seem to be goading one into a conversation about "What's the matter with Saxony?".

I'm obviously a dumb foreigner, and don't have much of use to add to Clarko's excellent post. But one thing I would say, is that something that gets brought up fairly often is the "valley of the clueless". As in, the  chunk of Saxony centred on Dresden where you couldn't pick up the West German broadcaster during the DDR days. The idea being, well, what the name says. The Eastern side of Saxony is generally stronger for the AfD these days, which might seem to be a testament to that to some degree. The same applies to some degree in Vorpommern, which is somewhat stronger for the AfD than Mecklenburg is.

I could also be talking out of my ass here, but from German friends and various cultural references, I also get the impression that there is a certain perception where Saxony is kind of East Germany, but turned up to 11. As in, it's the largest of the Neue Länder, but also has a very distinct local accent (probably the most easily identifiable after Bavarian); and I always get a feeling that all the clichés about Ossis apply even more so in Saxony. Various documentaries and comedy programmes and the like, when the subject is the East, always seem to wind up in Saxony; or to have a character speaking with an exaggerated Saxon accent as the representative "East German". Also you have Pegida being formed in Dresden as mentioned, but also the protests in Chemnitz, which probably has an even worse reputation for racism.

[RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm]

The maps just posted by Clarko are really nice, thank you. One could discuss about the potential breadth of this year's SPD strength, but in all honesty most of all they seem to be goading one into a conversation about "What's the matter with Saxony?".

I'm obviously a dumb foreigner, and don't have much of use to add to Clarko's excellent post. But one thing I would say, is that something that gets brought up fairly often is the "valley of the clueless". As in, the  chunk of Saxony centred on Dresden where you couldn't pick up the West German broadcaster during the DDR days. The idea being, well, what the name says. The Eastern side of Saxony is generally stronger for the AfD these days, which might seem to be a testament to that to some degree. The same applies to some degree in Vorpommern, which is somewhat stronger for the AfD than Mecklenburg is.

I could also be talking out of my ass here, but from German friends and various cultural references, I also get the impression that there is a certain perception where Saxony is kind of East Germany, but turned up to 11. As in, it's the largest of the Neue Länder, but also has a very distinct local accent (probably the most easily identifiable after Bavarian); and I always get a feeling that all the clichés about Ossis apply even more so in Saxony. Various documentaries and comedy programmes and the like, when the subject is the East, always seem to wind up in Saxony; or to have a character speaking with an exaggerated Saxon accent as the representative "East German". Also you have Pegida being formed in Dresden as mentioned, but also the protests in Chemnitz, which probably has an even worse reputation for racism.

Just as a side note that might possibly be relevant, the infamous “cardboard car,” the Trabant, was produced in Saxony. (Technically it wasn’t cardboard and was in fact cotton scraps and dye residues melted together to form the East German attempt at fiberglass)

[DL]

I had heard before that the Saschiche dialect was seen as a dead give away that someone was from the DDR and that for many years West Germans associated that Saxon accent with the way the East German border guards would bark at you when crossing the DDR to get to West Berlin etc.

I don't know if I've ever heard anyone speaking the Saxon accent. I am familiar with Bavarian and I also can recognize Kolsch from Cologne...but what does Saxon sound like? 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Would be careful with any constituency projections at the moment, particularly given that we'll be seeing a lot of constituency MdB's elected with less than 30% of the vote and maybe - maybe! - one or two with less than 20%. There are a handful of places where that's actually possible...

I'm not informed enough about what is actually true or not, or what should get the most weigh, so it would be great if the the Germany experts could confirm/refute/discuss:

• 1. Saxony was an independent kingdom that was involved in a lot of wars, and this led to an insular and rebellious culture in the state. During the days of the German empire, there was a lot of resentment towards Prussia. This can still be seen today in the "we don't want Berlin telling us what to do" attitude.

This is correct, though that kind of sentiment doesn't automatically result in right-wing political dominance, and certainly didn't in Saxony's past: it was the SPD's greatest stronghold before 1914 and while (unusually) the relative strength of the political left declined there during the Weimar Republic, most of it remained good territory for the SPD and the KPD was very strong in places as well. Of course Saxony was a very different place then: one of the most industrialised and economically important parts of Germany. It lost this role, permanently, with the post-war partition of the country. Note that Saxony now has a smaller population than it did in 1900.

• 2. During the Weimar period, the political left and right were constantly one-upping each other in extremism. While the SPD and KPD formed a government in 1923, they were promptly overthrown by a radicalized right-of-centre, and thereafter the SPD formed a weak coalition government with the DDP and DVP.

The place did have unusually bitter politics at the time, even for the time, but I don't think that has any bearing on contemporary matters.

• 3. The lack of Catholics and respective political Catholicism meant that there was no moderating force like Zentrum, which sought political compromise and stability. The strongest parties were the KPD, SPD, and later NSDAP, with the liberals and Zentrum marginalized for the most part (relates to #2).
  

That's also true - Saxony did have a strong liberal tradition of course, but those votes largely headed in the same direction as elsewhere by the 1930s... except for the Sorbs who were probably the most reliable DVP voters in all of Germany by the end - but, again, I don't see what it has to do with the present.

• 4. Saxony had both a large industrial base and also a large rural population. The conflict between the urban left and the conservative bourgeoisie was particularly nasty and heated (see #2 and #3).
  

With much of the countryside being industrial itself - textiles, largely. This is an important part of Saxony's political history: the industrialised countryside became good territory for the SPD before 1914 (despite a lack of significant trade union activity) but as the industry struggled during the Weimar years there was a very sharp rightwards swing and areas such as the Erzgebirge and the Vogtland became amongst the strongest for the Nazis in the country. Of course the KPD actually did very well in some of these villages as well. At the same time, though, Leipzig and surrounds remained SPD strongholds, as did the industrial suburbs of Dresden.

• 5. Refugees from Silesia could also play a role here after being expelled in WWII. Breslau, like Dresden, was also a very pro-Nazi city and it doesn't seem like a stretch to believe that people carried national conservative views and bitterness over the loss of their homeland with them westwards.
  

Breslau had a lot of Social Democrats as well, important to note. And many refugees from Silesia settled in the Federal Republic. But if things like that were a significant factor these days then the most right-wing state in Germany would be Schleswig-Holstein, which is where most of the surving populations of East Prussia and Further Pomerania (both well to the right of Silesia, especially the latter) ended up.

• 6. the GDR sought to associate fascism with imperialism and capitalism, and disassociated socialism with anything that happend before 1945, and so never went through the process of working through the past with open debate like what happened in West Germany. This obviously is not exclusive to Saxony so it's not too helpful in explaining why Saxony is so extreme compared to the other Eastern states, but it is one part of the puzzle.
  

This is important, and see the other posts about television reception etc. Things like that can matter a surprising amount.

• 7. One author posits that there has been a strong anti-democratic tradition in Saxony dating back over a century, which relates to #1, #2, #4, #5, and I guess #3 as well?
  

That applies to the entire country.

• 8. After reunification, the right-of-centre parties always had at least 54% in every election combined (centre-right to far-right). The state CDU chapter, however, never sought to introduce a culture of public remembrance and historical reflection, like what the rest of the CDU in the country actively cultivates. The state CDU also quietly embraced right-wing currents and showed little concern about them over the past 30 years. Unfortunately for them now, about half of their past voters are now embracing the right-wing/far-right.
  

Post-Wende dominance by a series of CDU strongmen is clearly an important factor, much as the former (and about to be current again?) strength of the SPD in Brandenburg was shaped by popular SPD prime ministers, yes.

• 9. Saxony also is unusual in the East for its strong network of "free comradeship" organizations (basically brotherhoods and civic organizations), which primarily tend to be a West German thing and are nothing special in the West. But in the East, the GDR suppressed most non-communist organizations, but Saxony escaped this. So one political scientist argues this is both a symptom and a cause of Saxon insularity (self-reinforcing cycle), and this magnifies far-right views
  

There was a lot of friction between the DDR regime and people in Saxony over various issues relating to that kind of thing. But one local organisation in Saxony that the DDR did crush completely (much more effectively than the Nazis) was the SPD and its wider social milieu.

• 10. Apparently the state level NPD also intentionally tried to cultivate an image of being "normal" and not a bunch of skinheads wearing army boots. The NPD had three very strong election results at the state level in 2004 (9.2%!!!), 2009 (6%), and 2014 (4.95%).
  

Though very alarming results for that sort of party at the time were not restricted to Saxony. But, yes, there's an established extreme Right vote in the state that the far Right has found easy enough to pinch.

• 11. an interesting quote regarding Dresden, translated from German:
  
  

  "Dresden is the city of culture with the largest horizon", there's something to this saying, isn't it? In other words, there is too much self-centeredness here. The city is politically conservative. It's different in Leipzig. Leipzig is a city of trade, of trade fairs, already comparatively cosmopolitan in GDR times and surprisingly multicultural even today for Eastern standards. That shapes the climate. Right-wing populist, right-wing extremist and national-conservative positions are more effective in Dresden than in Leipzig. The Pegida movement also began as a Dresden phenomenon."

Dresden has voted consistently to the right of Leipzig since 1990 (and did so back in the 20s and 30s as well!), but is far from being the centre of gravity for the AfD.

[Zinneke]

If there were a centre of gravity for the AfD would it be Chemnitz or Cottbus?

[Yeahsayyeah]

If there were a centre of gravity for the AfD would it be Chemnitz or Cottbus?

I really don't know, what the concept is here, but they usually get their highest results in eastern and central Saxony, so it's obviously Freital... But jokes aside, the AfD is weaker in bigger cities than in villages and small towns and even in rust-beltish cities like Chemnitz or Cottbus, they are only the largest party with at most the fourth of the vote in a six-party-system. The significance of that sometimes gets massively overblown.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Ran across this:

Germany protests to Russia over pre-election cyberattacks

BERLIN (AP) — Germany has protested to Russia over attempts to steal data from lawmakers in what it suspects may have been preparation to spread disinformation before the upcoming German election, the Foreign Ministry in Berlin said Monday.

In mid-July, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said that since February his agency had seen activity focusing on phishing attempts on the private email accounts of federal and state lawmakers and their staff. But he said that very few of those attempts were successful, and in cases where they were successful it appeared little damage had been caused.

Germany’s concerns about Russian interference have extended to the activities of state-funded broadcaster RT, whose online-only German-language service has for years emphasized divisive issues such as migration and the restrictions imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Curious what people, particularly Germans, think about it.

Who would Russia prefer to see win the election between the CDU, the SPD and the Greens?

The Russians mainly promote the Afd and attack the Greens. They're mostly hostile to CDU and SPD, but don't attack them as much as the Greens. That's because the CUD and SPD are mostly pro-EU and while they're not pro-Putin like the Afd they're also not nearly as anti-Russia as the Greens.

[Yeahsayyeah]

1. Saxony was an independent kingdom that was involved in a lot of wars, and this led to an insular and rebellious culture in the state. During the days of the German empire, there was a lot of resentment towards Prussia. This can still be seen today in the "we don't want Berlin telling us what to do" attitude.

Saxony was never independent, though from the 15th century on one the most important territories in the Holy Roman Empire. It only became a kingdom by Napoleon and a few years later it was basically shrunk in half by the demand of Prussia at the Vienna Congress, but kept as an entity for not letting Prussia become even more powerful, thus eventually solving the Brandenburg/Prussia-Saxony dualism as the main powers in central Germany, that was going on for several centuries. Of course, this fueled anti-prussian resentment, ans especially against Prussian domincance, in what was left, and which by a way, later became a stronger force on the political left at the time of the "Reichsgründung" 1866/1871. There was an electorally succesful left liberal Saxonian People's Party that was allied with the Social Democrats.

The anti-"Berlin", respectively, central-state-aversion for me seems to be a thing of the GDR era, that was a central state, where power and ressources were concentraded in the capital, and it is sometimes characterized as "Red Prussia", btw.

So there is clearly some federalist and exceptionalist mood in Saxony, that the CDU succesfully exploited 1990 onwards, trying to mimic the CSU in that regard.

But "rebellious" isn't the word, that comes in mind, when people think of "Saxonians", it's these folksy, a bit clumsy and slow-witted people obedient to autority, drinking coffee all the time and speaking in a strange dialect, that mostly sounds like wrongly pronounced standard German (In contrary, a case can be made, that Standard German is basically North Germans trying to speak the language of Martin Luther, but i disgress...)

I think the socio-economic factors are more important. Saxony has been an economic centre since the middle ages (Erzgebirge mining and mostly fertile soil), which led to a dense network of towns, capital accumulation and a huge base of socially free peasansts and workers as bases of industrialisation, which once again consolidated this status. So naturally, the social democrats were strong, and they were not solely concentrated in the big cities, but in all rural and small-town areas, that were affected by industrialisation. On the other hand, there were large swaths of handymen under pressure, of rural folks attached to their local church and gentry and an emerging bourgeoisie and quite reactionary elites. So, Saxony in the Empire era was always both, the "red kingdom", whre the SPD could win all but one districts in the Reichstag election in 1903, and the "model country of reaction", where the elites mantained their grip on the state politics and institutions with a mix of carrots and sticks, which probably formed the so-called Saxonian mentality, I spoke of above.

The case can be made, that the GDR cracked down the remnants fo the civil society social democratic structeres, if twelve years of Nazi rules had left anything, and used the implicit obedience that comes with authoritarian traditions. This probably explains, why Saxony is not a left wing stronghold, but it does not explain the Saxonian exceptionalism compared to the rest of East Germany. I think, it has to do with the relative economic decline during the GDR times, when this can't be said in the same way for the areas farther north where many new industries were built. So the desire to get the economic strength back and to get back to the good old days of glory, which the the CDU promised, was probably the biggest here, the political left was compromised the most and when the "blooming landscapes" did not come to pass, a part of the population look for answers and solutions farther right. Something one can often see thoughout Eastern Europe. Kurt Biedenkopf was popular as a person, that he got many more votes in the election for prime minister in the Landtag in 1990, than the CDU had seats. The SPD fielded Anke Fuchs. I still can't see how and why, maybe, because she was available...

And for everything that can be rightfully said about the state CDU embracing right wing currents, turning a blind eye to the right - which helped the abundant Nazi structures in Saxony to emerge, steering unwarranted Saxonian exceptionalism and paternalism, with Biedenkopf at the top, they were obviously better at governing than the other CDU state chapters in the East and for over a decade mostly scandal-free. This, of course, helped them to form the still fluid political landscape as the centrist people flock to them like the SPD formed Brandenburg's while the other three states became largely competitive.

2. During the Weimar period, the political left and right were constantly one-upping each other in extremism. While the SPD and KPD formed a government in 1923, they were promptly overthrown by a radicalized right-of-centre, and thereafter the SPD formed a weak coalition government with the DDP and DVP.

These "popular front" state governments in Saxony and Thuringia where overthrown by force by federal forces on the basis of a "federal execution". One can say, that the workers parties, especially the SPD, never fully recovered from that blow.

4. Saxony had both a large industrial base and also a large rural population. The conflict between the urban left and the conservative bourgeoisie was particularly nasty and heated (see #2 and #3).

The urban-rural dynamic is definitely something, that goes on, as Leipzig and Dresden and it's suburbs surely "westernize" in terms of political culture and the rural and rust belt areas don't do this that much, although generational turnover will probably also do something, there, at least in the mid-sized towns.

5. Refugees from Silesia could also play a role here after being expelled in WWII. Breslau, like Dresden, was also a very pro-Nazi city and it doesn't seem like a stretch to believe that people carried national conservative views and bitterness over the loss of their homeland with them westwards.

In East Germany, the number of 1945 refugees seems to correlate more with PDS votes. This makes sense, as the communists clearly saw these uprooted people, often treated badly by the native population, as a potential base, and in the long run many did find jobs created by the newly built-up industries. And a case can be made, that the open reactionary elements of the refugee population shifted westward between 1945 and the early fifties, when this was relatively easy.[/list]

[Astatine]

https://twitter.com/Wahlen_DE/status/1435625629463023616

Another day, another record poll for SPD, although Allensbach is the only major pollster still conducting face-to-face polls which might explain the disproportionally high result for CDU/CSU while FDP and Greens (younger electorate) are quite low.

[Estrella]

Related to the Saxony discussion, from Wiki:

Also, why the SPD strength in Brandenburg, and in such a sharply defined area? I know their later results are thanks to a popular Minister-President, but this was just a couple months after the Revolution.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Actually, there is one thing to say: no change for the SPD from 2017 is a bit surprising but I suppose it makes sense for the swing, if it's happening, to be most pronounced in the north and east and least pronounced in the south.

Infratest dimap has also polled Bavaria and come up with:
CSU 28 (-11)
SPD 18 (+3)
Green 16 (+6)
FDP 12 (+2)
AfD 10 (-2)
FW 7 (+4)
SED 3 (-3)
Others 6 (+1)

Some movement from 2017 for the SPD but not as much as the federal polls imply, which makes sense considering the likely large Eastern swings. A poll of BaWü would be pretty nice right now.

[Astatine]

Actually, there is one thing to say: no change for the SPD from 2017 is a bit surprising but I suppose it makes sense for the swing, if it's happening, to be most pronounced in the north and east and least pronounced in the south.

Infratest dimap has also polled Bavaria and come up with:
CSU 28 (-11)
SPD 18 (+3)
Green 16 (+6)
FDP 12 (+2)
AfD 10 (-2)
FW 7 (+4)
SED 3 (-3)
Others 6 (+1)

Some movement from 2017 for the SPD but not as much as the federal polls imply, which makes sense considering the likely large Eastern swings. A poll of BaWü would be pretty nice right now.

We need a poll of Schleswig-Holstein, so seat forecasts can finally include the SSW.

[President Johnson]

Polls from Bavaria are a total disaster for CDU/CSU. Scholz even has an approval rating of 57% in the state, just six points short of Söder's approval. And he's beating Laschet in chancellor preference:

Scholz: 39%
Laschet: 18%
Baerbock: 13%

https://twitter.com/Wahlen_DE/status/1435645352238108674

Again, this BAVARIA. The beautiful thing is that Söder will also be damaged by a result like that.


Trend Research/Radio Hamburg also had a national poll out yesterday:

SPD: 26%
Union: 20%
Greens: 15%
FDP: 13%
AfD: 12%
Linke: 7%
Others: 7%

https://twitter.com/Wahlen_DE/status/1435616533217267726


Is it now time for this?

[Mike88]

Two weeks left, and the momentum is still all for SPD. Quoting Dan Rather: "This is one of the greatest comebacks since Lazarus".

Curiously this can also apply for the Union if they, for some weird reason, come back from the dead. But, that seems very unlikely now.

[beesley]

A pointless but fun exercise would be to predict how many Bundesländer each party will win a constituency seat in.

SPD: Thanks to München and Mannheim/Heidelberg, all 16 seem safeish bets, though it's possible Bayern sticks to its roots, I suppose, or that they miss out in Sachsen, but neither of those seem likely.

Union: I'm going to predict they're locked out of Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, R-P, Saarland, Sachsen,  Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thüringen. I presume Merkel still has some coattails in her seat. That leaves 6, a pretty low total.

Grüne: Hardest to predict - beyond Berlin and Baden Wurttemberg it's tough as you're essentially predicting individual seats. 3 on the balance of probability, Sachsen seems the most likely given SPD dominance elsewhere.

AfD: 2. Sachsen and Thüringen, relying on hearsay somewhat.

Die Linke: 1. Berlin seems a safe bet but Sachsen doesn't.

FDP - 0. They won't win any, as usual.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I presume Merkel still has some coattails in her seat.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if she didn't, the CDU vote in MeVo seems to be collapsing without her. An Infratest poll of the state came out today:

SPD 31 (+16)
AfD 18 (-1)
CDU 16 (-17)
SED 11 (-7)
FDP 9 (+3)
Green 8 (+4)
Others 7 (+2)

[Yeahsayyeah]

It would be better to call parties by their proper name...

[Lechasseur]

It would be better to call parties by their proper name...

What are you referring to?