🇩🇪 German state & local elections

[Middle-aged Europe]

Well, that seems like a mess, particularly since there's no way a state government can split and it's also unlikely that they'll vote against the national party.

Which means a more accurate description of the Bundesrat now might be:

Government (fully, both CDU and SPD): 5
Government (partially, only CDU): 5
Government (partially, only SPD): 6

Pure opposition (neither CDU nor SPD): 0

How much power does the Bundesrat have? Are they required for all laws or only small stuff?

In practice it effectively means that the Merkel government needs the support of the Greens for passing bills that need Bundesrat approval, since CDU/CSU, SPD, and Greens currently hold a 37-seat majority in that chamber. If I'm not mistaken no other combination of parties has a numerical majority right now.

[Middle-aged Europe]

At some point sooner or later, SPD will fall below the 5% threshold in some regional election

Let's hope so. Maybe then they will get the message that being in bed with the CDU while offering Green positions with a slightly more working class rhetoric is not a winning message for the party.

I have on very good authority that if the SPD loses the Bremen state election in May there will be some kind of reckoning with Nahles being out the door. But it still won't be a sufficient reckoning imo.

This would lead to the same question that was raised after the losses in the Bavarian and Hessian state elections though: What's the alternative?

I mean, recently there has been some shatter about bringing Sigmar Gabriel back, but wouldn't this simply mean that the party is runnung around in circles? They oust Gabriel because they think Martin Schulz is the real deal. Schulz fumbles the ball with the Bundestag election and the coalition negotiations and is replaced by Nahles. Now they possibly replace Nahles with Gabriel because Nahles lost a couple of state elections...

[Middle-aged Europe]

Markus Plenk, chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the state parliament of Bavaria, has announced his resignation as group leader and his party switch to the CSU, saying that he's "fed up of being the civil facade of a party which is xenophobic and extremist at its core".

[Middle-aged Europe]

Btw, the candidates' list of DIE PARTEI for the upcoming EP elections consts of the following people. With the exception of the two top spots - both of which are well-known comedians, one of them already a sitting MEP - most of the people were selected due to their surnames.

1. Martin Sonneborn
2. Nico Semsrott
3. Lisa Bombe ("bomb")
4. Bennet Krieg ("war")
5. Kevin Göbbels
6. Tobias Speer
7. Elisabeth S. Bormann
8. Dietrich F. Eichmann
9. Andreas Keitel
10. Fabian M. Heß
11. Frauke Heß-Tchokam ("artist name": Frauke Hess)
12. Dr. Jens Glatzer
13. Marco T. E. Manfredini
14. Samantha Edsen
15. Eggs Gildo
16. Tobias Dittrich
17. Charlotte Brock
18. Katharina V. Drängler
19. Jana Käding
20. Norman Jutrowska

[Middle-aged Europe]

The rigged thermometers are lying to us.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The Brandenburg Wahl-o-mat is out: https://www.wahl-o-mat.de/brandenburg2019/


My results: ÖDP first (77.3%). Greens, Left Party and Animal Protection Party all tied for second place (73.9%).

Last place: AfD (28.4%), followed by FDP (39.8%).

Weird result, but I often get weird results in state election polls which don't fully correspond to the federal and European election Wahl-o-mats.


The Wahl-o-Mat for the Saxony state election will follow on the coming Monday.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The Saxony Wahl-o-mat is out: http://www.bpb.de/politik/wahlen/wahl-o-mat/293626/sachsen-2019


My results: Pirates first (88%). Greens and DIE PARTEI tied for second place (87%).

Last place: AfD (18.5%), followed by Blue Party/Team Petry (26.1%). [NPD at 33.7% probably due to their economically left-wing and more environmentally friendly policies?]


One thing I also noticed was that I tended to give slightly more "anti-authoritarian" answers in Saxony than in Brandenburg, hence also the better result for the Greens in Saxony. I suppose that could be a result of Saxony being governed since 1990 by a (compared to other state chapters) rather right-wing CDU and the AfD polling at ca. 25%, while Brandenburg has been governed by the SPD since 1990 with either the Left or a more moderate CDU as partner and the AfD polling at ca. 20% there. In essence, I have lesser trust in the Saxon state and the Saxon voters. This even led to the effect that I was slightly more willing to restrict immigration in Brandenburg than I was in Saxony.

[Middle-aged Europe]

ZDF says his name is Bernd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdHXn0LagMc


So does "Die Welt":

[Middle-aged Europe]

LOLwhat ?

They are the important news media of Germany and can’t get his name right ?

That’s like CNN showing a map of Austria with the capital Canberra ...

Actually, it was originally a one-time mistake by a regional newspaper which quickly led to widespread meme. The popularity of the meme in turn caused futher iterations of the same mistake, including one on the official Bundestag website:



Kinda suprised that the meme is completely unknown in Austria.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Actually, it was originally a one-time mistake by a regional newspaper which quickly led to widespread meme. The popularity of the meme in turn caused futher iterations of the same mistake, including one on the official Bundestag website.

No, it was Oliver Welke who did this mistake first. In the follow-up episode of the video posted above he corrected Höcke's name after he'd received much criticism from AfD supporters, and a meme was born...

That's incorrect.

The mistake was first made by the Thüringer Allgemeine in 2015. After Höcke showed himself outraged over that mistake in a video (that one: https://youtu.be/FLU-pZ7873E), Welke started to use the "wrong" name on his show on purpose.

Mit diesem Video begann alles. 2015 hatte die Thüringer Allgemeine aus Björn Höcke einen Bernd Höcke gemacht, und er schreit dagegen an. Hätte er das nicht getan oder hätte in diesem Moment keine Kamera vor ihm gestanden, wäre für den Rechtspopulisten mit Hitler-Rhetorik vermutlich alles besser gelaufen. Die Zeitung hätte ihren Fehler bemerkt und sich in der nächsten Ausgabe entschuldigt oder zumindest seinen Namen wieder richtig geschrieben. Niemals wäre der Fehler in den Nachrichten des ZDF gelandet, niemals wäre er über die Lippen der Moderatorin Marietta Slomka gehuscht.
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Doch er hat es damals nunmal lauthals beklagt, und zwar so laut, dass die heute-show das Video lustig fand. Seit die heute-show Bernd ...äh... Björn ...äh... Bernd – seit sie Höcke "Bernd" nennt, machen es alle, von der Huffington Post bis zum SWR. Und in der allgemeinen Wahrnehmung ist Björn offensichtlich schon so sehr Bernd geworden, dass ihn jetzt sogar die Redakteure und die Moderatorin des Heute Journals so nennen:

https://www.vice.com/de/article/9a43ye/bernd-oder-bjorn-hocke-die-ultimative-verwirrung-hat-ein-neues-level-erreicht

Die Thüringer Allgemeine hat Höcke wohl als erste "Bernd" genannt. 2015 stand der falsche Vorname versehentlich in einem Artikel der Zeitung. Höcke ärgerte sich darüber und beschwerte sich bei einer Rede. "Wut über den Auftritt des AfD-Politikers Bernd Höcke in Erfurt", zitierte er bei einer Demonstration aus der Zeitung, um dann in das Mikrofon zu rufen: "Mein Name ist Björn Höcke!" Das brachte das Team der ZDF "Heute Show" um Oliver Welke darauf, den Politiker fortan nur noch "Bernd" zu nennen.

https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/panorama/Bjoern-Hoecke-Bernd-Hoecke-Wie-heisst-der-Mann-denn-nun-id41247442.html

Die "Thüringer Allgemeine" hatte den Vornamen des AfD-Politikers im Jahr 2015 falsch geschrieben. Daraufhin hatte Höcke auf einer Demo in einer Rede wutschnaubend die Angelegenheit richtig gestellt: "Ich heiße nicht Bernd Höcke, ich heiße Björn Höcke." Diesen Auftritt griffen Oliver Welke und die Kollegen von der "heute show" dankbar auf. Seitdem heißt Björn "Bernd" in der Sendung.

https://www.stern.de/kultur/tv/bjoern-hoecke-wird-zu--bernd-hoecke----marietta-slomkas-lustiger-versprecher-im--heute-journal--7420836.html

[Middle-aged Europe]

 Was in Thuringia last week, and saw a lot of CDU and Green and Linke posters, no AFD posters, and also lots from some fringe leftist marxist revolutionary party. Loved Erfurt by the way.

The lack of AfD posters (in Thuringia of all places) seems a bit strange and goes contrary to my experience in Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg. Even in Potsdam - which is probably the number two Green patty stronghold in East Germany following Leipzig - the visible campaign posters for the recently held state election seemed to be split like 40% Greens, 40% AfD, and 20% SPD/Left.

That fringe leftist party must have been the MLPD, I guess. They have one or two odd millionaires as main financial contributors which often leads to the party being able to run campaigns on roughly the same level as major ones despite the fact that this never translates into actual votes for them. This ironically proves that money can't buy you everything even if you happen to be a communist with money.

[Middle-aged Europe]

What now? Dark red black coalition?

Merely suggesting openness to that (as it was done now by CDU state leader Mike Mohring) led to a lot of infighting and bickering within the CDU today. Since it could literally rip the Thuringian CDU apart I suppose the chances for that are rather small.

As a more viable alternative a Left Party minority government which would be tolerated by the CDU was suggested though. In any case, Mohring has agreed to talk with Left Party minister-president Bodo Ramelow about the possibility.

The Left is also a relatively comfortable position, since the Thuringian state constitution says that the incumbent minister-president can indefinitely remain in office until a new one is elected. As such, a Left Party minority government will automatically came in place anway as soon as the new elected state parliament convenes. So, in a way it's merely up to the CDU to decide whether they want to work with that government or not.

Ideologically, Bodo Ramelow himself is so moderate that he's practically a social democrat which makes to whole idea at the very least plausible. The main argument against the CDU cooperating with him boils down to "but he's a member in the wrong political party!".

Something that's probably not gonna happen is a Left-SPD-Green-FDP coalition, since the FDP is very steadfast in ruling that option out. Quite understable, since governing as the smallest partner in such a constellation could very well destroy the FDP state chapter in Thuringia for good. So, the FDP instead decided to pass the bucket to the CDU.

And before anyone else asks... yes, AfD-CDU-FDP (since AfD and CDU don't have a majority of their own anyway) is certainly by far the least likeliest of any coalitions or other cooperation models. There probably would rather be a fresh election instead of that.

[Middle-aged Europe]

How about CDU-AFD coalition and let AFD self-expose their incompetence in govt, also it'll do a damage to their "anti-establishment" brand

Because fighting racism by electing a racist to the position of head of government kind of defeats the purpose. The AfD is stronger than the CDU in Thuringia which means the top position could actually fall to Björn Höck in such a coalition. Which in turn means making someone minister-president who not only believes that Germany puts way too much emphasis on commemorating the Holocaust, but who at one point also justified his opposition to immigration by arguing that black people - unlike white people - possess a genetic predisposition for a high birth rate. Some things come at a too high a price.

[Middle-aged Europe]

In some way, it's really a pity that Ramelow talks like a Social Democrat, behaves like a Social Democrat, governs like a Social Democrat, but remains, after all, a LINKE politician. Otherwise, everything would be so much easier right now.

What are some ways where he differs from the party, and do others in the party attack him frequently?

Can't cite any specific examples myself right now but Ramelow isn't exactly known as a person who argues in favour of abolishing capitalism, for instance. So it's more of a case of what Ramelow isn't saying or doing instead what he's doing and he's operating mainly as a maintaining the status quo guy rather than a radical revolutionary. Oddly enough, I can't recall anyone attacking him for that, although I don't really know what's said about him behind the scenes in his party. Electoral success usually makes one immune to such criticism being voiced openly.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Given that AKK turned out to be a gaffe machine doing overtime, Friedrich Merz perhaps sees a real oppening for him to finally succeed Merkel as Chancellor. Whether he's too overconfident with this assessement remains to be seen. Koch on the other end is indeed simply settling old scored (and maybe hoping to help Merz in succeeding Merkel).

Even if AKK managed to eliminate herself as the frontrunner, I'd say it's likely that Armin Laschet eventually tries to make a play for the Chancellorship under such a scenario. Merz' full-scale attack is likely to divide the party and this may actually hinder his chances in the end. Laschet on the other hand could be seen as someone who could unite all factions.

[Middle-aged Europe]

3 of Merkel's 4 election results are among the bottom 5 in the history of the party.

Expecting the CDU/CSU to win results like its 1976 when there were only three parties in Parliament instead of six is a bit unrealistic IMO. Historically speaking one could argue that the CDU's electoral decline had started with the 1987 Bundestag election, because since then the party never managed to win more than 45% of the vote, something they regularly did in the preceding period between 1953 and 1983 when they came in above 45% seven out of nine times.

While it's to some extent true that Merkel moved the party to the center and left room for the AfD on the right, I wouldn't say that it's solely her "fault". Society - and as a result politics - has changed too and that's something you can't really influence or change back.

[Middle-aged Europe]

a. What happened to the FDP?

b. Why is Germany going to the left or greens, aren't things pretty good in Germany?

The electoral success of the Left in Thuringia is a Thuringia-specific phenomenon which can be attributed to the personal popularity of incumbent minister-president Bodo Ramelow. The Left did in fact lose a lot of votes in the recent Brandenburg and Saxony elections.

The current success of the Greens can be attributed to the unpopularity of the governing parties CDU/CSU and SPD with "nativist" CDU/SPD voters moving to the AfD and more "progressive" voters to the Greens. Some political scientists have also attempted to explain this with the old class conflict-based Right-vs.-Left dichotomy being overcome with a new Nationalist-vs.-Globalist divide, bringing trouble for the more traditional parties like CDU and SPD because they don't have such clear-cut stances on these issues. In addition, climate change had become a major political issue in Germany in the wake of the 2018 heat waves and the subsequent rise of new movements like Fridays/Parents/Scientists/Entrepeneurs for Future and the Extinction Rebellion. And finally, the Greens have - at least for the moment - managed to overcome and pacify their traditional infightings between the two major wings giving the appearance that they have've got their sh**t together for a change.

As for the FDP, they took a nose-dive in the polls right around the time they let the Jamaica coalition talks explode and they've never really recovered from that. To some extent, they've received the image that they shy away from assuming responsibility for the country when push comes to shove.



Anyway, due to a decision by the electoral committee in the city Weimar, the FDP has lost four votes in Thuringia today meaning that they're currently hovering a single vote above the 5% threshold.

After receiving some flak over his openness to talk with the Left, CDU state leader Mike Mohring has also started to float the idea of a CDU-SPD-Green-FDP minority government as an alternative to a Left Party minority government in Thuringia. It's at this point unclear how he's planning to get at least a few votes from the Left Party (assuming that AfD members would rather commit seppuku than to help a government which includes Grees and SPD into office) necessary to get him elected minister-president, so maybe it's only a tactical ploy.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I wasn't exactly surprised about the rise of the AfD either. Many people who vote AfD today already existed 20 years ago and they already held similar views back then. They only had no political party they could vote for at the time (except for the short-lived Schill party in the early 2000s and maybe NPD and DVU although the latter ones were probably too extreme for most people).

Anecdote:

It was almost 11 years ago that I was an intern at Cem Özdemir's office, at the time still a newly elected federal party chairman. Back then, we had to deal with the case of a Green Party donor - if I recall correctly the owner of an organic honey farming business somewhere in East Germany - who was about to quit giving his money to the Greens because he was afraid that newly elected Cem Özdemir wanted to introduce Sharia law to Germany. Now, if you have friggin Green Party supporters who were convinced that friggin Cem Özdemir is some kind of radical Salafist you can imagine how very, very easy it is for the AfD to win any votes.

That being said, I think the root problem here are people who are overwhelmed with an information overkill and are unable to correctly process that information and put them into the right perspective. I'm sure if you go look for it, you'll find hundreds of sites, blogs and Facebook groups about Salafists and Sharia law on the Internet, many of them certainly with lurid headlines and at least a portion of fearmongering. To correctly process this flood of information (and misinformation) in way that you don't jump to the conclusion that Cem Özdemir will soon become a suicide bomber himself is a task which apparently puts a lot people in a position where they are simply in over their head.

This was my diatribe against Facebook and social media for today btw. The very same phenomenon could also be observed during the aforementioned global financial crisis of 2008 and European debt crisis of the early 2010s, of course. Although recently I seemed to observe a noticable shift from a "the refugess are gonna rape our women" narrative to a "climate protection policies are gonna destroy our economy and take away all our cars" narrative to the point that even strong AfD supporters start to see immigration as something of a - at best - secondary issue. This new social media narrative re-uses some of the earlier financial/debt crisis tropes though. Once again we're about to lose all our wealth and are threatened with a decline to the status of a Third-world country.

Jack Dorsey's recent announcement to ban all political ads from Twitter was at least a bit of a gleam of hope here, although it was also a bit of a PR stunt.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Getting the impression that the relationship between Mike Mohring and his deputy Michael Heym is not a very good one, both professionally and personally.

The (i)morality of cooperating with the most extreme of all the AfD state chapters aside, I'm also unsure what Heym is attempting to achieve here exactly. Topple his own state chairman, defy the leadership the CDU federal party, successfully make it through possible expulsion procedures against him, and get elected minister-president of a "rogue" CDU minority government with the help of Höcke? Seems.... ambitious.

[Middle-aged Europe]

CDU secretary-general Paul Ziemiak - someone who was originally appointed by AKK in an effort to appease the conservative Merz/Spahn supporters in the party - has essentially reprimanded the Michael Heym faction of the Thuringian CDU for wanting to cooperate with Björn Höcke.

According to Ziemiak, the calls for holding talks with the AfD are - quote - "nuts". In addition he said that any form of cooperation with the AfD is "not acceptable" and whose who see that differently should ask themselves if they belong to the right party.

Josef Schuster, the President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has also weighed in on this one and has called the demands of the Heym faction "irresponsible".


I suppose the government formation is essentially put on hold now, because the Thuringian CDU is in a process of disintegration over their positioning towards the AfD.

[Middle-aged Europe]

After the Wendt and Möritz controversies I'm getting the impression that some in the Saxon-Anhaltian CDU want to break up the coalition on purpose. Perhaps not minister-president Haseloff himself, but some lower echelon people.

One of the main problems with the Wendt affair was also that the CDU unilaterally made a potentially controversial personnel decision without even consulting or notifying their coalition partners beforehand. And now the CDU outright threatened to terminate the coalition over a single tweet by the Greens state chapter's social media team... which seems a bit like overkill, unless there are some additional motives for that action. But maybe there are so aggressive now because their still pissed over the Wendt thing?

Anyway, today's news was that all parties involved started to back down a bit.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The SPD apparently doesn't mind its own business too and has linked a further continuation of the coalition in Saxony-Anhalt with "a credible commitment against right-wing extremism" by the state government.

https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2019-12/fall-robert-moeritz-sachsen-anhalt-kenia-koalition-fortsetzung-bedingungen

[Middle-aged Europe]

And apparently a second member of the Saxon-Anhaltian CDU with contacts to the far-right Uniter network has now popped up: Kai Mehliß from the "Conservative Circle" of the state CDU.

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/cdu-funktionaer-moeritz-zu-rechts-fuer-uniter-doch-fuer-die-cdu-reichts/25342718.html


Background: What is Uniter?

Uniter has been described in media reports as the official front for the so-called Hannibal network. The Hannibal network was a secret group of right-wing survivalists consisting of members of the German Army, the police, and the intelligence community whose existence was originally discovered and exposed by the Public Prosecutor General's office (and subsequently the Army's Military Intelligence), starting in 2017. A few Hannibal members had to stand trial for planning and preparing terrorist attacks against Syrian refugees.

Uniter is (so far) a legal association but membership between them and Hannibal seems to overlap a but. The terrorist from Christchurch, Brenton Tarrant, reportedly also had links to the Uniter association.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The debate about Saxony-Anhalt seems to have shifted a bit from "coalition in Saxony-Anhalt is about to break up" to "CDU in Saxony-Anhalt has a problem with right-wing extremists within their ranks" which ironically may have stabilized the state government for now since the CDU is not about to boot SPD and Greens out when the former is politically on the defensive anyway.

The story has also been picked up by some international media outlets:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/18/members-of-angela-merkels-party-found-to-have-far-right-links

[Middle-aged Europe]

Two and half months after the election Thuringia still hasn't a new government, although CDU state leader Mike Möhring has now made another attempt at selling a Left-CDU cooperation to his own party, this time calling it a Projektregierung ("project government").