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2021 German Federal Election

@Eye-Q the "people just wanted to get early vaccination" narrative is a warmed-up one from the days of "impfneid" (remember, when politicians threatened people with fines for getting vaccinated early) - was not possible to prove it by numbers back then, won't be possible now.

Generally speaking, look at the Laschet debacle from another perspective: Trust in CDU/Laschet is so low he has to prove he actually voted for himself.
 
Of course you can't prove it, but when a polling station can open just two instead of four lines that's pretty unusual. At least here in Hamburg one line needs a total of 8 people (four per 5-hour shift) so at least 9 or 10 of 32 people cancelled for one polling station. It's highly unlikely all those people suddenly fell ill so there has to be some kind of explanation. If you speculated on an earlier vaccination for volunteering that would be a reason for many of the "me first" people to cancel their participation, at least I wouldn't be surprised in these days...
 
Eye-Q said:
Of course you can't prove it, but when a polling station can open just two instead of four lines that's pretty unusual. At least here in Hamburg one line needs a total of 8 people (four per 5-hour shift) so at least 9 or 10 of 32 people cancelled for one polling station. It's highly unlikely all those people suddenly fell ill so there has to be some kind of explanation. If you speculated on an earlier vaccination for volunteering that would be a reason for many of the "me first" people to cancel their participation, at least I wouldn't be surprised in these days...
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The problem with this line of thinking is that this would mean less legit volunteers, or an above-average share of legit volunteers being turned down in favor or "fake" line-jumpers. A third of people cancelling would mean an extremely high share who took the vaccine as an incentive to volunteer dropping out. I would see the general lack of competency of Berlin's government plus the brilliant idea to hold a marathon in parallel to the election, stopping car traffic and a large chunk of public transport, as other plausible explanations.
 
eizbaer said:
technically more of a Cologne saying, less Aachen, no? :think:
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It all looks just like Rhineland from here. :p

Eye-Q said:
The article I linked speculates about people registering in spring just to get an earlier covid vaccination, but now that everybody who wants a vaccination can have it regardless of pre-existing conditions they all have their vaccinations so their participation wouldn't gain them anything.
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Well, the "get vaccinated as a reward for volunteering in the elections" scheme required the volunteers to receive their shots in time to be fully vaccinated on election day. It wouldn't be surprising at all if some - or many - of those people were bailing out now. You'd have to look at statistics and compare them to previous election to judge if the amount of cancellations is really significantly higher than usual.

Dr_Grip said:
Trust in CDU/Laschet is so low he has to prove he actually voted for himself.
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It's funny because it's true. :D
I actually fear that the CDU will win, and their low numbers in pre-election opinion polls has just been due to their voters being ashamed to admit wanting to vote for them.
 
DanRoM said:
I actually fear that the CDU will win, and their low numbers in pre-election opinion polls has just been due to their voters being ashamed to admit wanting to vote for them.
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A friend of mine has the opposite hope: People are ashamed to confirm voting AfD so they say CDU - making AfD under- and CDU overpolled.
My main fear is four more years of GroKo. The FDP has basically slammed the door shut on anything containing the Greens, which takes most other options off the table.
 
C4BA1171-8DDA-497F-8512-0457F8E5EDBE.jpeg


FOUR MORE YEARS (of GroKo)! :wall:
 
Even with a GroKo fear and even if the race is still too close to call, what I find interesting is the general trend:
  • The center holds: Eventhough mass media is pushing (and enabling) a narrative of a polarized society drifting apart, we see that both far left and right lost ground
  • In the same vein, the CDU got punished for sucking up to the AfD, while the Green finally see some profit from their ongoing shift towards the center
  • Furthermore, the CDU got punished for the "Hillary move" of just putting up the stooge that was "next in line", underestimating their opponent.
What pisses me off is that due to the CSU being a seperate entity technically, the CDU/CSU block is getting three extra seats at the same vote share. Überhangmandate my ass.
 
eizbaer said:
Lindner is going to do his „better not than wrong“ spiel again, isn’t he?
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Has already been confirmed by Kubicki.
eizbaer said:
At least Berlin seems to have gone unexpectedly well…
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McPomm is even more amazing, with CDU and AfD losing a dozen percentage points combined.
 
eizbaer said:
Oh god no - it’s going to happen again, isn’t it?
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I guess so. Being part of the government is too lucrative for the CDU/CSU to give it up over a technicality (their worst ever election result) and the SPD obviously doesn’t have a problem with joining them. Whether it’s going to be cum-ex-Olaf or Luschen-Laschet remains to be seen.

The Lindner fan club may once again pretend to be interested in governing, but since that would mean joining the Greens at the cabinet table, they won’t do it.

So we can kiss any hope of meaningful future-proofing of this country goodbye. I would love to be surprised, but I also fear to be surprised by a black/blue/yellow coalition.
 
jack_christie said:
themarkup.org

Germany’s Far-Right Political Party, the AfD, Is Dominating Facebook This Election – The Markup

Ahead of a national vote this month, Citizen Browser data shows that posts promoting the AfD party appeared more than three times as often as rivals'
themarkup.org themarkup.org
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Facebook being a haven for misinformation, racism and other trash? In an election year, no less? Why, I've never heard anything like this before! </sarcasms in American>
eizbaer said:
Things are already starting to get ridiculous… honestly, is this the first time this doofus votes or something???

View attachment 3562624
For clarification: votes are supposed to be secret, so he folded his ballot wrong (on purpose, as the same situation with his wife implies). Thus, his & her votes should both be invalid. Dumbasses.

Edit: someone already filed charges against the photographer (unknown) and the editor in chief of BILD for publishing this. If it’s illegal to take a selfie inside the booth, then this bullshit sure as hell is as well…
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ENHANCE
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ngl I don't blame him for that vote
 
Wow, aren't we a patient bunch of people. No one posting projections yesterday evening... (y)

Anyway, the preliminary results are in. Numbers taken from the official site (https://bundeswahlleiter.de/bundestagswahlen/2021/ergebnisse/bund-99.html):

btw2021-preliminary-result.png


CDU and CSU are listed seperately here, they have 24.1% of the votes together. So, the SPD with Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz as top candidate have won by 1.6%.

Now, this all results in the following numbers of seats in parliament:

btw2021-preliminary-result-seats.png


Please note:
  • Due to (mainly) the CSU having won more direct seats (45) than their measly 5.2% gives them (they should have only 31), parliament is enlarged from the supposed 598 to 735 seats by giving other parties more seats so that the proportions are correct again.
    I chose the CSU as the most significant example, because they dominate Bavaria to such an extent (getting all but one direct seat there). But the effect is in play elsewhere, too (Sachsen for the AfD, for example).
  • The Linke profits from winning three direct seats, which lets them circumvent the minimum 5% rule (you need 5% of the votes to make int into parliament), so they also get all the parliament seats their 4.9% vote share gives them.
  • The SSW (Südschleswiger Wählerverband) is the party of the Danish minority in the far North of the country. As representatives of an officially recognized minority, they get the one seat their vote share suggests, even though they are far from the 5% hurdle.
  • Due to the "others" (Sonstige) having a relatively large share and the 5% rule, only 91.4% of the votes actually determine 100% of the seats in parliament, the share of seats for every party in parliament is actually larger than their vote share.
  • As a bright spot in all the results, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the infamously right-wing former president of the German domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) failed to obtain a mandate. His candidacy for the CDU was a sore spot for the party, because he was nominated by the locals in the Thuringian Nazi redneck county against the will of the party leadership.
So, what does this mean? Mathematically, a continuation of the "Grand Coalition" between CDU/CSU and SPD is possible (with the SPD leading this time), as they cover 54.7% of seats. But nobody wants that, really.
Consequently, the first coalition options to be considered are "Traffic light" (Red/Yellow/Green as in SPD, FDP and Greens) with 416 out of 735 seats and "Jamaica" (Black/Green/Yellow from the Jamaican flag, meaning CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP) with 406 out of 735 seats.
This practically means the Greens and FDP can choose which of SPD or CDU/CSU they want to lead their coalition, provided they can compromise among themselves. This leaves the nominal winner of the election, the SPD, in an unusually weak spot.

Enough for now, I have to start working. :D
 
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Since the Greens and the FDP probably can't agree on anything except for investing in education and green tech startups maybe, there is a real risk we'll see them not coming to an agreement and Germany heading into four more years of Grand Coalition or another vote.
 
Dr_Grip said:
Since the Greens and the FDP probably can't agree on anything except for investing in education and green tech startups maybe, there is a real risk we'll see them not coming to an agreement and Germany heading into four more years of Grand Coalition or another vote.
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Lindner gonna lindner... again? :| Yes, of course he will...

as for coalition talks: not too fussed, honestly. it's going to take ages. today and the next few days, for me it's all about the Schadenfreude of seeing Laschet made responsible for the CXU results by his party :mouse:
 
After CDU personell seems to have leaked information from both confidential talks with liberals and greens, to the utter shock and surprise of no-one, those now prefer to talk to the SPD about a possible coalition...

 
am I the only one left in here?:tumbleweed:

Aaaaaanyway we have a coalition agreement with lots of "we want", "it will", "it shall" - i scrolled through a few parts of the 178 pages. all in all it seems like the expected compromise with quite a few ambitious targets but with close to zero actual measures defined to reach those.
it still seems like the FDP, despite being the smallest partner, got a lot of their core promises through, while the greens will probably suffer, since any compromise at all (in their core topics) will be received as failure. this is already apparent in the shuffling of ministries: why the hell did transport go to the FDP and not the greens? why did the greens get foreign affairs instead? ugh.

anyway - i'm too cynical now to expect any decent change (esp. in regards to climate change) any time soon. the opposition will use their power in the bundesrat to fuck up any progressive policy and possibly descend even further into GOP territory (at least on a communicational level).

tl;dr: huge meh in my book.
 
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