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Bundestagswahl 2009 [German Election]
enc0re
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Germany went to the polls today, in its quadrennial federal house and chancellor election. May I present to you the new chancellor, same as the old one:
Angela "Angie" Merkel
This 55 year old CDU politician continues to be the first female chancellor of Germany. Born in the West, raised in the East, she holds a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry.
Like all good elections, this one had ass...
Caption: "The only reason to choose black. Time for green." Black being the color of the CDU, green the color of The Greens.
...and titties.
Caption: "We have more to offer"
Records were broken. First for the FDP. Best election result ever. Most improved party in two consecutive elections ever. FYI, "ever" in Germany means "since WWII."
Guido Westerwelle, secretary general of the FDP and presumed next foreign minister, on the left. His life partner on the right.
Then for the SDP. Worst election result ever.
Top photo:SPD chancellor candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the left. Defeated. Hard. Party leader Franz Müntefering on the right. You can see how happy he is.
Bottom photo: SPD member reaction.
The Greens. Hippiliciously happy about breaking the 10 percent barrier.
Renate Künast, co-chair of The Greens, on the left. Jürgen Trittin, member of paliament and arguably the most powerful Green politician, on the right. The Green party charter doesn't permit elected politicians to simultanously hold executive power in the party. Hence the strange split.
Another unfortunate record: 72.5% turnout. Lowest ever.
Results. Vote share by party.
Yes, that's the Pirate Party at 1.9%. You need 5% to get into parliament.
Relative to 2005 election.
Ouch SPD!
Seats. Including overhang mandates.
You do not want to know what overhang mandates are or how they are calculated. Trust me on this one.
Party Key:
CDU. The CDU's policies encompass derivatives from Political Catholicism and Catholic social teaching, political protestantism, as well as neoliberalism, fiscal conservatism and national conservatism.
Sounds scary. But lacks a religious right to actually be scary.
SPD. The current party platform of the SPD espouses the goal of social democracy, which is seen as a vision of a societal arrangement in which freedom and social justice are paramount. According to the party platform, freedom, justice, and social solidarity, form the basis of social democracy. The coordinated social market economy should be strengthened, and its output should be distributed fairly.
Sound like Democracts. Are like the Democracts.
FDP. The party's political guidelines uphold the principles of freedom and individual responsibility under a government "as extensive as necessary, and as limited as possible." The FDP's policies are marked by skepticism of public intervention and of socialist as well as socially conservative policies.
Sound like Libertarians. But lack the crazy.
The Greens. Political union of environmentalists formed in the '70s. Have since become a respectable green party. Hippies that have grown up and lost the stupid.
Nothing comparable in the US.
The Left. Actual socialists. Makes calling any other parties' policies "socialist" impossible, since the actual socialists will object. Just look at their chancellor candidate Gregor Gysi.
So socialist.
So anyone who wants to discuss Germany's election and its fallout, we now have a thread.
Angela "Angie" Merkel
Like all good elections, this one had ass...
...and titties.
Records were broken. First for the FDP. Best election result ever. Most improved party in two consecutive elections ever. FYI, "ever" in Germany means "since WWII."
Then for the SDP. Worst election result ever.
Bottom photo: SPD member reaction.
The Greens. Hippiliciously happy about breaking the 10 percent barrier.
Another unfortunate record: 72.5% turnout. Lowest ever.
Results. Vote share by party.
Relative to 2005 election.
Seats. Including overhang mandates.
Party Key:
CDU. The CDU's policies encompass derivatives from Political Catholicism and Catholic social teaching, political protestantism, as well as neoliberalism, fiscal conservatism and national conservatism.
SPD. The current party platform of the SPD espouses the goal of social democracy, which is seen as a vision of a societal arrangement in which freedom and social justice are paramount. According to the party platform, freedom, justice, and social solidarity, form the basis of social democracy. The coordinated social market economy should be strengthened, and its output should be distributed fairly.
FDP. The party's political guidelines uphold the principles of freedom and individual responsibility under a government "as extensive as necessary, and as limited as possible." The FDP's policies are marked by skepticism of public intervention and of socialist as well as socially conservative policies.
The Greens. Political union of environmentalists formed in the '70s. Have since become a respectable green party. Hippies that have grown up and lost the stupid.
The Left. Actual socialists. Makes calling any other parties' policies "socialist" impossible, since the actual socialists will object. Just look at their chancellor candidate Gregor Gysi.
So anyone who wants to discuss Germany's election and its fallout, we now have a thread.
enc0re on
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I love an election where a vote for change is a vote for the incumbent executive and her party's preferred partners.
Wasn't criticizing the system, just commenting on some absurdities that it creates.
Fair enough. I really like MMP and I guess I'm a little sensitive to perceived criticism
Mind you, Merkel's popularity is through the roof. Voters weren't looking for change from her, but for change from the grand coalition.
Yeah, I knew Merkel was going to stay in.
I response, security was tightened.
Oh and threatening Germany with terror? That works about as well as blackmailing Russia with hostages.
Yes. Notice the German spelling Al Qaida. Also, the notice in the beginning mentions that this speech is not to be broadcast over music, as it contains prophecies. The title of the show (after Al Qaida presents) is "Security - A Shared Fate."
If somebody finds the second video, please post it.
EDIT: A bold claim, given that these assclowns seriously advocate eliminating our public health insurance system.
Reaction against status quo?
I suspect that rather than a left or right leaning that it's an anti-establishment movement. People see a crisis and move against the party that's in power if they see their country tanking, regardless of fault.
Down under, Labor (left wing party) is enjoying high popularity despite having been in power during the financial crisis, which to my mind is due to our (comparative) economic success; thanks to stimulus spending and heavy regulation of our banking industry, amongst other things, we've managed to not go into recession. Quite the feather in their cap.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
And this happened during the Great Depression too when I'm pretty sure the status quo of most European nations was significantly more conservative.
In favor of Swiss style compulsory private insurance. It's not like they are advocating dismantling UHC. Besides, while that may be in their platform, it's not exactly their priority.
Also, who wants to get rid of Merkel? I think these results show with stunning clarity that Germany likes her. I mean, SPD below 25%? I'm gonna be
Baby steps. :-P
Well, yeah. Obviously. Their sole priority are tax cuts and further privatization. Which is why they'll happily bend over for the CDU/CSU when it comes to civil rights issues. Again. Just like they did here in Hesse and in Bavaria.
I do. She treats politics purely as a popularity contest (and doesn't even bother pretending otherwise), I've yet to hear her say anything of substance and almost every part of the political spectrum has far more competent candidates to offer.
Yes. People like her. They don't necessarily like what she stands for, what she's done so far or what she plans on doing for the next 4 years. Most of them don't even know any of those things. There was this awesome thing some time ago, where she had like a 70% approval rating and our government had 70% disapproval. Same poll.
Why would you possibly think that that's a good thing?
Obviously we occupy different parts of the political spectrum. I (absentee) voted 1st vote: CDU 2nd vote: FDP. I'll go ahead and guess your ballot was marked differently.
But I don't really want to turn this into a general politics thread for Germans. Let's keep the focus on Germany's election, especially from an American perspective, and it's wonderful outcome.
The Germans had an election? That is the American perspective.
Because we have about 0 national coverage of foreign elections that are of governments that don't want to blow us up.
Seriously, I didn't even know this had happened until I clicked this thread.
but they're listening to every word I say
From the still I immediately thought "This Al Qaeda threat written and directed by Wes Anderson."
Well, let's check in with the great American networks.
CNN
MSNBC
CBS
FOX
but they're listening to every word I say
And Oktoberfest, which runs for three uninterrupted weeks, gets literally more than 20x the screen space of the federal (and two state) elections that happened today.
EDIT: beat'd.
Which kind of pisses me off as an American. We rebelled to free ourselves from Monarchical rule. Why do we have to know what Prince Harry is up to? Or even who he is, for that matter.
He does a lot of racist stuff, so he's a pretty good story to follow :winky:
I was reading an Economist article on the election.
It gave me the impression that the way these overhang seats work is that you lose your actual election, but because people like your party you get to keep it?
My mind is blown.
I like to know about British politics so that jokes on the Bugle are funnier.
Is the coalition ideologically compatible? It seems like the big thing they have in common is deregulation, but how does one work out what to do when two parties differ on policy points? After the Chancellor is selected are votes on party lines? Coalition lines?
Similarly: why Union/FDP? Clearly the Union and SDP can join a coalition and it would represent a greater number of the population: ~60% instead of ~50%. Is there any real justification for this other than political maneuver? And if that's the case, why would the FDP join with the Union?
It seems now the SDP will be out of the Cabinet. In this case, why don't they go to the Greens and FDP. Offer the FDP the Chancellorship (or at least more than the Union would) in exchange for significant representation in the Cabinet for the SDP and some lesser representation for their old partners the Greens? Something is better than nothing. Are their ideologies too incompatible?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The front lines, so to speak, where already drawn before the election. Usually, voters are pretty aware of what they will receive in terms of coalitions when they make their choice.
Also, just going by ideologies, the CDU is the closest the FDP has, imho. I would have loved to see CDU/Grüne though.
Also, no mention of the CSU? I think they resemble the crazy religious wing the best (although they are really tame compared to the US).
So it's a mixed member proportionality system. You get 2 votes. The first vote is a plurality vote. It works just like in the US. You tally up all the votes in the parliamentary district and the candidate with the most (first past the post) wins that seat. The second vote is a proportional vote. All the votes are tallied nationwide and the seats apportioned relative to the vote share. However, any party who scores less than 5% doesn't get any second vote seats.
Now, all the first vote district wins are used to fill up the second vote apportioned seats. Any second vote seats left over are filled from the party list, like in straight up proportional voting systems.
However, what if a party gets more first vote seats than apportioned seats (and this is calculated by state, not nationwide)? In that case, all the first vote winners are also seated, but by adding seats to parliament. Those are the overhang seats filled with overhang mandates.
This happens in two cases: the large two parties (CDU and SPD) get a much larger share of the first votes, since first-past-the-post tends to collapse to the two largest parties. Also, you sometimes get a very small party with local support that has only 2% or whatever of the national second vote but manages to win a district. The effect is that the CDU and SPD need effectively fewer second vote votes per seat, giving them a small edge.
However, the German Supreme Court has recently ruled this edge unconstitutional, but said it continues one last time for this election, to keep things orderly. So the SPD threatened to sue, if the CDU/FDP coalition had won only due to overhang seats. Which fortunately didn't happen (the SPD got smoked), so stupid lawsuits have been avoided.
You were right.
Seconded. Also, their system of governance is more democratic than ours. Half of our legislative branch is allocated based on grid lines on a map that have nothing to do with population.
If CA was smart, we would split into like 6 states and have 12 senators.
As a general rule, the major issues of policy are decided between the parties forming the coalition before the chancellor is elected, sometimes even before the general election. If new issues come up 8and they always come up), the parties discuss them and find a compromise.
We just had 4 years of Union/SPD and it didn't really work out very well. Nonetheless, if the results had made a black/yellow coalition (all coalitions in germany are color coded for convenience) impossible, we would have had a continuation. But traditionally, the Union and the SPD are the leading parties of the various political wings (Union right, SPD left - until recently, the SPD did not even acknowledge that there could be a party to the left of them. The Union still does the same for the right wing), so a coalition of the two is seen as something bad, since neither can really play its political agenda. The US system of two major parties with several wings does have its advantages here.
In any event, both the FDP and the Union actively worked to get a coalition going, since they usually go for the same constellation on a state level (the greens are the equivalent for the SPD) and had Union/FDP coalitions on a federal level in the past - Kohl was the last chancellor of such a coalition.
Offering the FDP the chancellorship is out of the question. For a party like the SPD, who has always been the single other option of chancellorship or prime ministership in the states (the other option being the CDU) to give it up to a party they don't even really like would be a deathblow. An unconditional surrender. It would rip that party apart. Not possible at all. Not to mention that to create a government when you have just lost 11% in a general election and have the worst results since 1896 (and they were basically banned back then!)...not happening. The FDP base would ask for the party leaders heads as well.
There has been a lot of talk about coalitions with both the FDP and the greens (plus one of the traditionally leading parties - codeworded the traffic light option and the Jamaica option. I will leave it to you to figure out what is what), but its a bit like the bipartisan debate in the US - no one has a real problem with it on a basic level, but as the FDP to work with the SPD (evil socialists!) or the Greens with the CDU (evil nature destroying, civil rights crushing imperialists! Well except in Hamburg...) and suddenly its a no go.
As for me, I went with first vote Green (not so much because I'm such a hippy, but because in the east they absorbed the various civil rights groups that brought about the fall of the wall, and I happen to live in the east, and their candidate was such a civil rights guy. Didn't make it though. Now Rostock is represented by a socialist...) and second vote Piraten. Its a sad fact that we now need a THIRD party in parliament that claims/pretends to fight for civil rights, because the FDP and the Greens have proven ineffective.