🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[brucejoel99]

RIP in peace, Armin Laschet

https://twitter.com/olivernmoody/status/1376269886465449986

Congratulations, Chancellor Söder

[brucejoel99]

I know that there would never be a Brasilien Koalition incluind the Green, the FDP and the AfD. It would be weird an environmentalist liberal fascist government.

Yes, that would be bizarre.

In "Look Who's Back" Hitler, repulsed at the NPD for aesthetic reasons, uses the Greens as his electoral vehicle.

[brucejoel99]

With those numbers, Germany's just one bit of momentum away from being in SPD/Green territory, sans an FDP-need.

[brucejoel99]

Having not paid as much attention to this election as I would've liked to, would it be right to state that the only mathematically possible coalitions that'd also be politically possible (i.e., not including AfD) can be traffic-light (SPD/Green/FDP), Jamaica (Union/Green/FDP), GroKo but with the SPD heading it, & R2G (SPD/Green/Linke), with traffic-light at about a 2/3rds chance, R2G at about a 1/3rd chance, & reverse-GroKo & Jamaica being extremely unlikely?

Likewise, would it be right to state that any coalition negotiations - but especially if they potentially result in failure & another GroKo a-la 2017 - will likely drag into 2022 & thus entail that Merkel remains caretaker Chancellor in the meantime?

[brucejoel99]

Others will be able to make a more definite statement than I can, but I find it hard to imagine that (barring a truly unworkable Bundestag) German political culture would permit an extended delay in government formation like what we see regularly in Belgium or the Netherlands.

Wasn't there a 6-month delay just 4 years ago?

[brucejoel99]

Shameless lack-of-an-answer-induced repost:

Having not paid as much attention to this election as I would've liked to, would it be right to state that the only mathematically possible coalitions that'd also be politically possible (i.e., not including AfD) can be traffic-light (SPD/Green/FDP), Jamaica (Union/Green/FDP), GroKo but with the SPD heading it, & R2G (SPD/Green/Linke), with traffic-light at about a 2/3rds chance, R2G at about a 1/3rd chance, & reverse-GroKo & Jamaica being extremely unlikely?

Likewise, would it be right to state that any coalition negotiations - but especially if they potentially result in failure & another GroKo a-la 2017 - will likely drag into 2022 & thus entail that Merkel remains caretaker Chancellor in the meantime?

[brucejoel99]

What even is the point of the SPD anymore?

[brucejoel99]

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.

[brucejoel99]

The last days swing back to the CDU seems like it was actually a thing. If my math isn't terribly wrong RRG is off the table, so either Jamaica or traffic light? unless we'll get a shocker grand coalition again

R2G isn’t necessarily off the table if the ZDF poll is accurate.

The ZDF poll's seat projections show R2G coming in at just 3 seats short of an absolute majority.

[brucejoel99]

The last days swing back to the CDU seems like it was actually a thing. If my math isn't terribly wrong RRG is off the table, so either Jamaica or traffic light? unless we'll get a shocker grand coalition again

R2G isn’t necessarily off the table if the ZDF poll is accurate.

The ZDF poll's seat projections show R2G coming in at just 3 seats short of an absolute majority.

Very easy for the poll to be 3 seats off

Of course, it could just as very easily wind up being 3 seats off in the other direction & putting R2G at least 6 seats short.

[brucejoel99]

What does the basic law dictate here? who gets the first shot to present a government for a confidence motion in the Bundestag?

Nobody gets "a first shot;" it's basically a free-for-all among the majority parties to reach an agreement before the President proposes a candidate to the Bundestag, which can take a while (see: the 2017 vote being held in Mar. 2018).

[brucejoel99]

The last days swing back to the CDU seems like it was actually a thing. If my math isn't terribly wrong RRG is off the table, so either Jamaica or traffic light? unless we'll get a shocker grand coalition again

R2G isn’t necessarily off the table if the ZDF poll is accurate.

The ZDF poll's seat projections show R2G coming in at just 3 seats short of an absolute majority.

Not on the Zeit website? They’re at 376 seats.

(Although practically speaking I think traffic light is still far more likely.)

Yes, they're at 376, which is 3 seats short of 379, an absolute majority of 756, their overall projected number.

[brucejoel99]

Can the FDP leader be the Chancellor in some grand coalition

Theoretically? Sure

In practice? Absolutely not. The Chancellor always comes from the largest coalition party

What if neither CDU or SPD is able to put together a coalition that has the support of the majority of parliament. Could the FDP come on top as sort of a compromise

Again: could? Technically in a theoretical sense, sure. Will it, though? Never. An FDP chancellor wouldn't be an acceptable compromise for a majority in the Bundestag.

[brucejoel99]

Barring another Groko, does it really matter whether the SPD beats the CDU by 1 seat or loses by 1 seat?

Only in the talking-points sense of which party has the mandate to govern.

[brucejoel99]

Updated ARD exit

24.7% Union 155+43 Seats
24.9% SPD 197 Seats
14.8% Green 117
11.3% AfD 89
11.2% FDP 88
5% Linke 40

24.7% Union 154+44 Seats
24.9% SPD 197 Seats
14.6% Green 115
11.7% FDP 92
11.1% AfD 88
5% Linke 39
x% SSW 1

So it basically boils down to whether Scholz can nail the Greens\alliance to pledge to only join a coalition led by the SPD and pressuring the FDP to join? otherwise with time the green will drift towards a Jamaica set up?

Unlikely.

[brucejoel99]

Updated ARD exit

24.7% Union 155+43 Seats
24.9% SPD 197 Seats
14.8% Green 117
11.3% AfD 89
11.2% FDP 88
5% Linke 40

An another indication of an Americanization of German elections:

Will the 2021 federal election turn into a 2016 US election? 🤔
The SPD might receive the most second votes while the Union could pickup more seats (thanks to overhang and leveling seats for the CSU.)
It would be extremely funny and ironic if the SSW seat (an SPD ally) was going to tip the scale.

I thought the leveling seats were assigned based on national results? Was the law changed since last time?

Hahahaha, Many users complain about this, but in Canadian elections "The popular vote doesn't matter in a parliamentary system," okay.

What?

Pretty sure you didn't see a lot of support for FPP in the Canada thread...

If you weren't there in the Canada thread on election night, Serg conflates acknowledgement of the status-quo with support for the status-quo to weakly "accuse" supporters of electoral reform of hypocrisy. Nevermind the obvious irony.

[brucejoel99]

AKK is on track to lose Saarbrücken. She is way behind in Saarbrücken City and only narrowly leads in her hometown Püttlingen. It's pretty much over for her.

Linke in Saarland collapsed to 5 % after more than 12 % in the last federal elections.

Can she get in on a list spot?

[brucejoel99]

What is the likelihood of  Grand Coalition 2.0 (post-Merkel and seemingly with a SPD chancellor)?

It only happens in the unlikely event that both traffic-light & Jamaica negotiations were to fail.

[brucejoel99]

What is the likelihood of  Grand Coalition 2.0 (post-Merkel and seemingly with a SPD chancellor)?

It only happens in the unlikely event that both traffic-light & Jamaica negotiations were to fail.

I'm of the opinion that another election's more likely tbh

Idk, this is Germany: stability & continuity are seemingly valued above everything else, & a 2nd election seems only like a last-resort, break-glass-in-case-of-emergency type of option for the event that GroKo negotiations were to themselves fail.

[brucejoel99]

I wonder what Scholz thinks about the impossibility of an R₂G coalition?

Is he relieved because he doesn't need to agonize over the initiation of exploratory talks with the Communists?
Or does he regret not explicitly having ruled out a coalition with the ex-SED?

Probably just annoyed that their under-performance is gonna cost him a lot of leverage in the traffic-light negotiations, & a Plan B in the event that said negotiations fall through.

[brucejoel99]

How's that one Schleswig-Holstein interest party doing? Are they likely to end up in the Bundestag?

With just 1 seat out of 730+, yes.

[brucejoel99]

cdu is in shambles, lash**t reminds me of mccain 2008, he knows he doesn't have a chance after his predcessor destroyed the country and the party, but he plays along

[brucejoel99]

So I know nothing about this:

What party is Merkel?

Her current party is the Christian Democratic Union, the major catch-all party of the center-right in 15 of the 16 German states' politics that combines on the federal level with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, to form a center-right alliance known simply as the Union. As an East German, she was previously involved in the East German pro-democracy party, Democratic Awakening, after the fall of the Berlin Wall catalyzed her political career; following the first & only free & fair election in East Germany, that party merged with the East German Christian Democratic Union, which in turn merged with its western counterpart - the CDU that she now leads today - after the German reunification. She chose to step down from the chancellery at this election, & the Minister-President of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (equivalent to an American governor), Armin Laschet, is her successor as CDU leader & chancellor-candidate; as North Rhine-Westphalia is Germany's most populous state, this is basically like if Jerry Brown had been the 2016 Democratic nominee after Obama was term-limited.

Whose going to win?

At this juncture, it seems as if the SPD is still likely to emerge with both the most votes & seats, albeit in a more narrow fashion than most recent polling suggested. This gives them the proverbial "mandate to govern" in a normative-ish, public-relations sense, in that most Germans would probably be shocked if the largest party were to end up not leading the government, with political & cultural norms generally dictating that such a largest party should be the ones to have the first shot at conducting coalition negotiations, but there's no formal process like in Westminster parliamentary systems or in Spain or in Israel: in Germany, coalition negotiations are basically a post-election free-for-all among those non-AfD parties that constitute a majority in the Bundestag - minority governments aren't really a thing in Germany; they're allowed, but they're avoided at all costs - to reach an agreement, on the basis of which the President can then propose a chancellor-candidate to a vote in the Bundestag, which can take a while; for example, the 2017 vote was held in Mar. 2018.

What kind of system do they have? (Similar to….?)

MMP, similar to NZ. Voters can cast 2 votes: one to decide the Bundestag member for their single-seat constituency via FPTP, & another for a political party list for proportional representation. Seats in the Bundestag are filled first by the successful candidates in the 299 constituencies, & then by 299 party-list candidates based on the percentage of votes that each party received, with party list seats further allocated in a manner that covers any proportionality gap between the percentage of the vote that a party receives & the percentage of single-seat constituencies that they happened to win.

What’s the spectrum alignment of the leading parties? (LEFT to RIGHT)

There's Die Linke (literally "The Left") on the left/far-left, the SPD & Greens as pretty interchangeable parties on the center-left, the pro-business FDP in the center/center-right, the Union on the center-right, & AfD on the right/far-right.

[brucejoel99]

Any chance Die Linke falls below 5% threshold thus not able to get top up seats?  Looks like it will be close.

No, because they're winning their 3 direct constituencies, so they'll still be entitled to PR seats even if they fall below 5%.

[brucejoel99]

Any chance Die Linke falls below 5% threshold thus not able to get top up seats?  Looks like it will be close.

No, because they're winning their 3 direct constituencies, so they'll still be entitled to PR seats even if they fall below 5%.

They're only ahead In 2 atm

Source? Haven't seen any update since:

DIE LINKE is currently ahead in Wahlkreis 84,86 and 153 (2 Berlin seats and 1 in Leipzig). Looks like they will make it even if they end up under the threshold.