🇩🇪 German state & local elections

[palandio]

Now that I think about it I am wondering why I never thought about this:

The Senate and its president (i.e. the government and the governor) are elected by the Bürgerschaft (i.e. the state parliament). The Bürgerschaft consists of two delegations, 68 delegates from the Stadtgemeinde of Bremen proper and 15 from Bremerhaven. The 68 delegates from Bremen at the same time form the Stadtbürgerschaft (i.e. the city parliament of Bremen proper).
But as Hades said, the senate president automatically becomes the mayor of Bremen proper and the senators (i.e. ministers) become the Dezernenten (local government). Hence the mayor of Bremen proper is also elected by the citizens of another city, that is Bremerhaven. In the extreme case the mayor and his city government could even not have a majority in the city parliament. (This of course happens all the time in some other German Länder, where the mayor is directly elected like the American or French president.) Weird.

[palandio]

46% for R2G is better than the 42% in the INSA poll from June 02 and better than the 38% in the Infratest dimap poll from August 28. This comes mostly from the Greens doubling their share from 6% to 12%. At the same time I have doubts whether the recent surge in polling for Greens, SPD and Linke taken together is real. In Bavaria and Hesse it didn't manifest itself.

[palandio]

Tbh I think the fact the AfD's support is significant even without a key leader is best for them in the long run. The fact that UKIP only really had Garage as a public face kind of capped their staying power, whilw afd has proven resilient through several leadership changes.

My impression is that the German Parteiengesetz (party law) enforces party structures that are stronger than the eventual leadership, at least for relevant parties. Constructions like Forza Italia, Five Stars or PVV are not possible. For similar reasons, German parties are quite stable by comparison. At the same time an AfD controlled by its uncontrollable membership made it difficult for its founding professors to keep their Frankenstein in the clinically pure ward of intellectual "liberal" conservativism. After her coup against Bernd Lucke, Frauke Petry made a similar mistake. She wanted to rebuild the AfD into a leadership oriented party like the French FN (now RN) under her role model Marine Le Pen, but her position in the party was weak, she didn't have enough friends and networks and she didn't understand at all how German parties in particular and the AfD in general work.

[palandio]

What kind of people are still voting for SPD?

With the SPD shrinking at that pace, mostly voters with features that make them less likely to change their voting habits quickly:
- older voters
- voters that have always voted SPD
- voters in areas where voting SPD has always been the normal thing to do
- voters from social environments where voting SPD has always been the normal thing to do
- voters from areas that are less affected by general trends and social change

[palandio]

To those interested in an interactive Map of the Results as they fill in:
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/landtagswahl-sachsen-2019-alle-ergebnisse-im-ueberblick-a-1281842.html

That map shows that the AfD is ahead in 15 districts for the direct vote, when they need 9.

It seems their strength today is making up for their stupidity when submitting their flawed list.

Keep in mind that some of their constituency winners are also on the list (7 out of 15 I think). That makes 8 districts that actually matter.
election.de has a useful map that shows which constituencies have AfD candidates that are not on the list by red dots:
http://www.election.de/cgi-bin/showforecast_sn19.pl?map=190824
(The colors are from the election.de forecast and hence outdated.)

[palandio]

Interesting fact: Rising turnout means that even in shrinking states the Grand Coalition (which in Saxony was also the governing coalition of state level) basically remained stable in absolute terms.

Saxony
CDU from 645,414 to 695,494 (+50,080)
SPD from 202,396 to 167,378 (-35,018)
together from 847,810 to 862,872 (+15,062)

Brandenburg
SPD from 315,201 to 331,240 (+16,039)
CDU from 226,835 to 196,989 (-29,846)
together from 542,036 to 528,229 (-13,807)

The AfD seems to have gained a lot of former non-voters that had been disaffected from politics for quite some time.

[palandio]

[...]

What are the voting patterns? Who won which kind of areas and which party was strong in which kind of areas?

The SPD was strongest in the poorer quarters among the peripheral quarters, particularly housing estates like Billstedt, Jenfeld, Lurup, Steilshoop. But the main reason for the SPD's overall strength is that it did very well in the more bourgeois suburban areas, too.

The Greens are strongest in the whole range of dense, central areas that all have that alternative/progressive/liberal vibe to some degree.

The one area which has a Left plurality is basically a harbour and industrial area, with a few housing blocs in some places, very low-income and immigrant-heavy. The Left is generally strong in those alternative quarters that are still in the process of gentrification.

The CDU is strongest in the bourgeois quarters, particularly in the more suburban ones and in the quasi-rural south-east.

The AfD seems to be mostly a peripheral protest party in Hamburg.

The FDP is strongest in the wealthiest quarters.

[palandio]

Stuttgart has a new mayor: Dr. Frank Nopper (CDU) will succeed Fritz Kuhn (Greens).

First round (November 8 )
Nopper (CDU) 31.8%
Kienzle (Greens) 17.2%
Schreier (center-left independent, SPD membership suspended) 15.0%
Rockenbauch (SÖS, left-wing anti-S21) 14.0%
Körner (SPD) 9.8%
Reutter (independent, civil servant in Stuttgart's business promotion) 4.4%
Ballweg (chief organizer of "Querdenken" protests against anti-COVID measures) 2.6%
Kaufmann (AfD) 2.2%
All others ca. 3%

Despite arriving in second place, Veronika Kienzle (Greens) retreated due to perceiving her result to be disappointing (by Green Stuttgart standards). Körner, Reutter and Kaufmann retreated as well.

Second round (November 29)
Nopper 42.3%
Schreier 36.9%
Rockenbauch 17.8%
Ballweg 1.2%
All others ca. 2%

Looks like a classical own goal by the left-of-center political spectrum. Yes, I know that the center-left doesn't own the vote of left-wingers; but in other Bundesländer where before the runoff all candidates except for the first and the second are excluded, Nopper would either have lost against Kienzle or won with >50%.

[palandio]

The thing is that if you take the sum then the left-of-center result in the first round (and even the second round to some degree) was quite good. It's just that electoral arithmetics is more difficult than taking sums, particularly when one side of the political spectrum sinks into chaos and confusion.

I can't say if Kienzle and Claudia Roth are similar personality-wise. Culturally they're both non-mainstream in different ways. Roth (former manager of proto-punk band Ton Steine Scherben) is just very left-alternative in a shrill way. Kienzle seems to be the Steiner/Waldorf/Anthroposophic kind of weird and anthroposophia is originally not left-wing at all. You're right though that the Greens' extraordinary success in Baden-Württemberg was built to a large degree on offering candidates that are somehow culturally close to the mainstream. This probably explains Schreier's 15% in the first round, because given that the SPD is now a ~10% party and that Körner got ~10%, Schreier's votes were mostly not SPD votes but rather "generic left-of-center" votes that might have gone to a more culturally mainstream Green candidate in another situation.

One point that nobody mentioned so far is turnout: Turnout fell from last year's council election (57.5%) to 49.0% in the first round and 44.6% in the second round.

Which means that the convergence of left-of-center-votes on Schreier was even worse.

The interesting phenomenon that I do not yet understand is Rockenbauch. At the last council election Linke and SÖS combined arrived at 9.7% which means that there is a hard support base for a hard-left candidate. But in this election significantly more voters voted for Rockenbauch even in the first round and confirmed their vote in the second round knowing that Rockenbauch had no chance to win this and was basically a spoiler candidate. This could be residual grievance from S21 resulting in "I don't care if a CDU, SPD or Green candidate wins, they're all the same". Which still doesn't explain Rockenbauch's improvement over prior left-wing performances.

[palandio]

Oswald Metzger left the Greens in 2007 and has been a member of the CDU since 2008.

When talking about Palmer's chances to become Ministerpräsident we should try to separate this discussion from what we think about him personally. Personally I have sympathies for many of his politics although I think that his difficult persona gets in his way way to often.

That being said there's no chance he will get nominated by the Greens. Yes, he has a working relationship with his local party because most of the time he's pursuing ambitious Green politics on the local level. And yes, Kretschmann, Özdemir and others in the party have some sympathies for him and have tried to hold their hand over him again and again. Still Palmer (particularly as a public persona above the local level) and large parts of the Greens (even in Baden-Württemberg) are just too far apart, as has been proven by party decisions like the one cited by Pick Up the Phone. In the (purely hypothetical) case of his nomination the Baden-Württemberg Greens would burst.

[palandio]

Some surprising late developments for the state elections in BW and RP on Sunday:

# in BW, the Greens are now 8-10% ahead of the CDU, after a close race a few months ago
# the FDP is rising slightly (+ above 2016 levels) and maybe even the AfD (but below 2016)
# Left still projected below the threshold
# SPD is where it always has been

# in RP, the SPD seems to have pulled ahead of the CDU by a few points, thanks to the MaLu Dreyer incumbency bonus (same as before the 2016 election).
# Green voters are getting cold feet, won’t vote for the unknown and vote SPD instead (in fact, the Greens dropped from 20% a year ago to 10% now - while the SPD gained the same).
# AfD maybe rising slightly, but all within the MoE and below 2016
# FDP falling slightly again after some increase in the last few weeks
# the big surprise could be the centrist, municipal-based Free Voters - who seem to gain CDU and FDP voters and could get close to the 5% threshold

Will it hurt Laschet's chances of becoming the Unions' Chancellor candidate if the CDU loses both elections?

Ah yeah, this is still not decided ...

At this point, they should probably run Merkel for another term ...

That depends very much on what main reason the CDU/CSU will find for its losses (assuming that they will be losses). Söder's popularity for example has decreased together with the popularity of the restrictive COVID-19 policy, although it is still higher than Laschet's.

Merkel at this point is in my opinion a part of the problem rather than the solution. I'm not saying that it will become better after her, probably it will become worse. But delaying the inevitable won't make it easier.

[palandio]

It should be noted that the huge amount of postal voting weeks ago might have prevented the CDU from a bigger crash in both states ...

Many voters sent in their ballots before the CDU mask/money scandal.

According to infratest dimap the CDU lost ca. 2% compared to the last poll before the scandal in both Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz. This is not that much after all. And if you take into account that between one half and two thirds voted by mail, then the effect of the scandal will be ca. 1%.

[palandio]

The unrecognized winners of the evening are the exit polls, which proved to be about as accurate as in 2016 in spite of the logistical difficulties.
[...]

The exit polls were generally good. If we wanted to be nitpicking then the biggest systematic errors would be:

- AfD overestimated by 2.8 (FGW) and 1.8 (infratest) percentage points in BW. AfD overestimated by 2.2 (both FGW and infratest) percentage points in RP.

- CDU underestimated by 2.2 (FGW) and 1.7 (infratest) percentage points in RP. CDU underestimated by 1.1. (both FGW and infratest) percentage points in BW.

- Governor's party underestimated by 2.2 (FGW) and 1.2 (infratest) percentage points in RP. Governor's party underestimated by 1.1 (FGW) and 1.6 (infratest) percentage points in BW.

Overall infratest's exit polls were closer to the final result in RP, whereas in BW it depends on the metric that you use.

The reasons why there were (minor) systematic errors: Postal voting in Germany is correlated with socio-economic variables and typically favors CDU, FDP and Greens, whereas SPD (in the West), AfD and Linke are less favored. Pollsters account for this, but the exact degree to which postal votes are different from precinct votes varies from election to election.
- It seems that the AfD fared particularly badly in motivating AfD-leaning voters to vote by mail, even worse than usually. Many of them just stayed at home instead.
- The CDU upswing with postal voters seems to be at least partially the effect of a last minute swing against the CDU that couldn't affect already cast postal ballots. Pollsters knew that something like this could happen, but it's very difficult to build time-effects into your models.
- Particularly the SPD in Baden-Württemberg (edit: Rheinland-Pfalz) seems to have been better at turning out postal voters than usual. A part of the explanation could be that Malu Dreyer motivated voters far beyond the traditional not-so-postal-friendly SPD electorate.
- In general it seems that German elections are seeing an increasing part of the electorate that is generally establishment-friendly, non-populist, but not party-loyal and likes to vote for popular incumbents. I can't prove it, but it makes sense that these people on average are also more likely to vote by mail. A statistical cleavage could be developing between postal voters and in-person voters that is not mainly socio-economic, but also related to attitudes towards the generic centrism that is prevalent nowadays. COVID-19 is probably accelerating this development.

[palandio]

The thing about the FDP is that its core vote has been below 5% at the federal level for quite some time and in Lower Saxony even more so. There are certain segments of unaffiliated and loosely affiliated voters that gravitate towards the FDP and away from it according to circumstances.

When the FDP is in a "happy" coalition with the CDU and seems close to the 5% threshold, there can be "loan" votes.

When certain right-of-center voters are unhappy with the CDU, they may vote for the FDP. This is at the moment not very common because of the Traffic Lights coalition.

In 2017 in particular the FDP served as a vehicle for many voters for whom the CDU was too much to the left but that couldn't stomach voting for the AfD. It's not surprising that many of these voters have now gone to the AfD.

Recently the FDP has attracted many younger voters, probably because of COVID restrictions, but not only.

When during a meet-up with friends in spring one friend complained about the FDP blocking the continuation of COVID restrictions, another friend replied: "At least one reason why voting FDP was worth it." As far as I know some reasons why he had voted for the FDP (in 2021) originally were fiscal responsibility and preventing Red-Green-Red. In the past he had usually voted Greens and maybe SPD, because of environment, climate and other reasons, but he is more on the "Realo" side of course.

A group from whom the FDP should be careful to take advice is people who are not at all close to the FDP. It's clear that as long as the FDP stays in the Traffic Light coalition and the CDU/CSU is in opposition many of the old right-of-center swing voters won't come back and may not come back even after that, so just shifting to a traditional right-liberal position won't save it for the FDP at the moment. At the same time the FDP should ask itself what are its unique selling points towards people who are in principle ok with a Traffic Light coalition, but prefer a FDP signature. The people that recommend the FDP just supporting the Red-Green agenda are SPD or Green core voters anyway, so they are not relevant in this regard.

Or maybe the FDP is caught between a rock and a hard place anyways and there is no way out for the moment.

[palandio]

[...]

I am one of those SPD supporters they should be wary of, but I'll try to be objective:

[...]

Don't get me wrong, yours seems like a fair assessment to me.

My impression was just that in general many ideas what the FDP should do or shouldn't do are not presented in good faith. "The FDP should become like us (Greens or SPD) because look how successful we are" won't play it because Green and SPD sympathizers will stay with the original. At the same time many who propose a shift to the right won't vote for the FDP as long as it stays in a coalition that inevitably enacts a lot of Red-Green policies. And leaving that coalition now is problematic for the reasons you named.

[palandio]

LINKE Bundestag member Thomas Lutze has officially left the LINKE and its parliamentary group and joined the SPD. I would think, it has much to do with the intra-party infighting in the Saarland state party. Connected to this there have been several allegations of fraud etc. over the years. Btw, the SPD of the Saarland did not want him, so he joined the Berlin state party.

Hopefully Dietmar Bartsch is next. He's often a voice for reason and would fit into the SPD's left wing. The government has now 417 seats and SPD 207, ten more than the Union.

What’s the expected ideology of a post-Wagenknecht Linke? Are the moderates potentially leaving because they regard it as too extreme or because it’s a sinking ship?

The Linke has been popular within parts of the activist "alternative" milieu from the beginning, but recent years have seen a strengthening and increased organization of what is now called the Bewegungslinke ("movement Left"). "Movement" means social movements like climate activism, pro-migrant activism, advocacy for sexual minorities and for the weakest elements of society. The Bewegungslinke now often has a plurality at party conventions and when Wagenknecht (who is vehemently opposed to the Bewegungslinke) leaves, it may eventually become a majority. The nomination of Carola Rackete (refugee boat captain and climate activist) as European election lead candidate is a clear indication of where the Linke is headed. The Bewegungslinke is often confounded by the media with the party's moderate "reformist" wing. And while there is certainly some overlap the Bewegungslinke on average is more critical of compromises for the sake of government.

Will the moderates leave? And if/when they do, why? By traditional labels Wagenknecht and most of her core supporters were part of the Linke's left wing. So theoretically the post-Wagenknecht Linke should move to the center. But my impression is that after becoming a minority within their own party, some moderates by now prefer a party in which no faction is the majority to a party with a majority that is not them. Additionally moderates from areas with a weak alternative voter potential (i.e. the East outside of some big cities) might fear that they will lose their already crumbling voter base.

[palandio]

Are there any indications of how tight a ship Wagenknecht will run? It strikes me as the sort of party that could attract a few ‘oddballs’ or at the very least an ideologically diverse crowd of candidates, so it’s not guaranteed that all those elected for the party will stay loyal to the agreed position on policy, government formation etc, which would pose problems for stable government if reliant on the BSW.

Due to Germany party law, she doesn't really have it in her hands.

What the organizers are trying to do is to manage the order of admission of new members. They announced that they are going to admit 400 members tomorrow, probably mostly (former) LINKE functionaries and local MPs as well as known and proven sympathizers, all selected by hand. Further LINKE rank and file might follow. The hope seems to be that in this way they can keep control in the short-term and also find enough reliable candidates. But medium-term and long-term everything can happen. I mean German parties are allowed to reject members when there are certain reasons (e.g. [former] membership in certain other parties or organizations) but you are not allowed to generally close your party, so enough 'oddballs' will find their way into the party sooner or later, the only question is how relevant they will become.

[palandio]

BSW surge in Thuringia

https://twitter.com/Wahlen_DE/status/1747578462125138421

Anti Atlantist parties at 48

The repective articles on the websites of the commissioning newspapers (all of them owned by Funke Medien) are behind a paywall, so I can't read them. But according to Tagesspiegel, which is generally known to be reliable, BSW was not explicitly mentioned as an option.

So we now have INSA which has BSW at 17% in Thuringia and 13% in Brandenburg and Forsa which as BSW at 4% in both Thuringia and Brandenburg (and below 3% nationally). This is an extreme difference.

One reason could be a difference in methodology. Forsa is using polling by phone, INSA is using an online panel.

But I can't help to think that at least one of these two pollsters has an agenda, probably both of them.

If Infratest dimap sticks to its bi-weekly interval, we'll get a national poll from them tomorrow. The method is usually a mix of both phone and online panel.