We’ve got threads on the British and French elections, so I thought I’d do a trifecta and start one on the German federal election in the fall of this year.
Don’t know if it’s too early for predictions?
Most likely a continuation of the current GroKo. As Welke pointed out a few weeks ago, the difference between Schulz and Angie is that one has a beard. I don’t see the difference on what face the SPD uses - Schulz or somebody else - if they don’t acknowledge their past mistakes and go to a different route; since we’ve Long lost any visionaries (last one Willy Brandt) who could Appeal with a different message, we are getting the original CDU and the copy SPD.
The only good Thing that might happen is that with Frauke Petry not running for the AfD, the votes might be split between NPD, AfD, Lucke’s Alpha (Alphatelefon :)) and other right-wingers, maybe saving us from the embarrassement of overtaking or going head-to-head with the Greens at 10%.
The really interesting question is: will the FDP make a come-back? Oh wait, that’s not really interesting, because they are still a foot-note.
So same old mostly, with potential for worse with the AfD.
Petry 's not running? How come?
Just about a week ago, she declared she wouldn’t run as a candidate. Experts pointed out that she’s still in Charge of the Party itself; and that in the previous elections when the AfD won seats, it seemed to be more the “program” * of the Party than the candidates, since in some cases, the candidates where from out of the County or unknown or similar.
Experts also claimed that not running at all, instead of running and possibly loosing, is a smart move for Petry regarding her own Position of power inside the Party; but not good for the Party as whole, since she’s one of the most well-known faces federally. But then, who seriously expects her to care more about what’s good for the Party instead of what’s good for her?
- Since the AfD didn’t have a proper program for some time, and then a short one with lots of phrases but Little specific measures they want to implement, I think this is a polite euphemism for “the voters followed the racist, right-wing anti-EU rhetoric that both AfD and Pegida have been spewing for some time”.
Sarah Wagenknecht and the ideologues have successfully captured the Linke (Left) Party on the Weekend and sunk any hopes of R2G (Red-Red-Green: Left + Social democrats + Green coalition). Effectivly they declared “we don’t want compromises because that’s bad, we want to Keep ideologically pure” = don’t give us your vote, we don’t want to take responsibility for governing.
So? predictions for the vote later this month? Any significant developments?
Probably a moderate but comfortable margin in favour of the existing Merkel CDU/CSU + SPD coalition. Most polls see CDU/CSU polling at about 37% and SPD at about 22%. That’s a 4-5% fall for SPD vs the beginning of the year, but actually higher for CDU/CSU.
Exit polls:
CDU: 33
SPD: 20
AfD: 13.4
Green Party: 9.4
Left Party: 9
FDP: 10.5
SPD announced that they will not be available to continue the coalition (makes sense, that result is a massive slap in the face), so it will probably turn out to be a so-called Jamaica coalition (CDU, FDP, Green).
Shameful result. AfD are not much better than Nazis.
Agreed. It’s a sad day for Germany. We, if anyone, should have known better. I truly can’t believe that the horrors of our past have been so widely forgotten.
Can anyone explain to this ignorant American what the results mean?
They ARE Nazis, without the boots. Damned for those 13,4 % who voted for those shitheads.
First, it means that both traditional “big” parties who formed the “Groko”, the former coalition, got their ass handed, especially the SPD, who now wisely chose to end the misery of that coalition and will form the biggest party of the opposition. This means that the only thinkable coalition would be Jamaica (the name’s because of the party colors matching the Jamaican flag), CDU with chancellor Merkel, the FDP and the Greens. This makes out for, well, interesting coalition negotiations, try to get three parties with sometimes orthogonal views to form a government. But then, maybe it’s good that new coalitions have to be made, the CDU-SPD coalition was a drag and horrible for the SPD.
Then, of course the damning success of the AfD, who are Nazis by conviction and in wording, only in sheep clothes, their ill-fitting business suits. Time will tell if this is a temporary phenomenen, due to the refugee crisis two years ago, or if they become a steady force in German politics. I hope they will totally mess up their presence in the Bundestag (because they are a bunch of internally struggling and fighting idiots), and we’ll get over that. I’m allowed to hope…
Thanks!
I don’t know a lot about it. Here’s what I, an ignorant Yank also, remember about German federal elections. I’m going largely from memory, but I did look a couple of things up to avoid misleading you too much.
It’s a proportional system with a threshold of a few percentage points to get in. The numbers are percentages.
CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists) are the centre-right coalition, Merkel’s party.
SPD are the Social Democrats, one of the other major parties. Centre-left.
AfD (Alternative for Germany) are pretty new, some kind of nationalist thing. [I deleted a sentence here because I confused them with Pegida. AfD are Euroskeptics, Pegida are more like, “save Europe from the Turks by stopping Muslim immigration.” But I suppose some chunk of Pegida supporters, after going out and marching and acting obnoxious, would vote AfD.]
**Greens are more mainstream in Germany than pretty much anywhere else. They, CDU, and SPD were the three major parties in recent decades.
Die Linke (the Left) are a leftist party. I think they started in the eastern part of the country, which has had a higher proportion of Marxist true believers and nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic. Sort of communists, but more “populist” than “Russian puppet.”
I don’t remember FDP. Oh, they’re the liberals. Not the USA sense exactly, but classical liberals. Think the Economist, not the Progressive. I think they were they were the third major party before the Greens got big.
As a German who has followed politics for over forty years: kudos, very good basic rundown.
Thanks!
Sadly, I think it’s often not so much forgetting, as yearning for, the past.
So if the Jamaica coalition is formed what changes in German government policy?
CDU/CSU is an amalgamation of two party names, one of which is active in Bavaria, the other of which is active in the rest of Germany. It’s kinda like how Minnesota’s state Democratic party is called the DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor), except Bavaria is much more important to Germany than Minnesota is to the US, so the name of their party active only in that state that collaborates nationally with the other party gets thrown into the name of the party as a whole.
Its a mistake to compare AfD with Nazis because it miminalizes the evil that the NSDAP was. Afaik, the AfD aren’t anti semetic. They are Germany firsters on par with Marie LePens party in France and perhaps Donald Trump. Their 8.5% gain matched almost perfectly with the CDUs 8.2% loss. Blame Merkel for dragging her party too far to the left. On DW yesterday, someone called her the Teflon Chancellor. A more traditional CDU will result in a marginalized AfD.