This leads to a 3 party coalition right? So the question is basically who they exclude?
How is the negotiating done in Germany?
Getting 3 parties to agree to exclude leads some weird Game Theory and has a high chance of becoming pretty negative ...
It's probably either SPD with Greens and FDP, or CDU/CSU with Greens and FDP.
Greens and FDP are are already stating that they want to talk with each other before talking to either CDU or SPD.
Last election CDU was in talks with Greens and FDP when the liberals crashed the talks out of the blue sky and we ended up with 4 more years of CDU/SPD as coalition.
Cologne II contains the wealthier parts in the southwest, that's it basically I think.
They're less strong in Cologne I and III. Still the biggest gains of all parties compared to the last election.
This leads to a 3 party coalition right? So the question is basically who they exclude?
How is the negotiating done in Germany?
Getting 3 parties to agree to exclude leads some weird Game Theory and has a high chance of becoming pretty negative ...
Practically, everybody can talk with everybody and figure it out. For example, in this fascinating live show I am watching, the FDP and Greens were entertaining the possibility that maybe they should talk first even though they would definitely be junior partners in any coalition.
Technically, they key person is the President (head of state). It's a little bit like the Queen of England, where the President is the only one with the authority to submit a Chancellor candidate to parliament. What this means, and this has worked out quite well historically, is that if negotiations are not coming to a solution; the President might step in and use his popular prestige to bang heads together and publicly call out parties to get going on forming a government.
The Left losing over 4% is a bit bitter. Just the remote possibility of them forming a coalition with SPD and Greens might've put some pressure on the FDP to be a bit more forthcoming during coalition talks.
The Left losing over 4% is a bit bitter. Just the remote possibility of them forming a coalition with SPD and Greens might've put some pressure on the FDP to be a bit more forthcoming during coalition talks.
they went a little too far with the hippy pacifism. They kinda shat in their own bed there
This leads to a 3 party coalition right? So the question is basically who they exclude?
How is the negotiating done in Germany?
Getting 3 parties to agree to exclude leads some weird Game Theory and has a high chance of becoming pretty negative ...
Practically, everybody can talk with everybody and figure it out. For example, in this fascinating live show I am watching, the FDP and Greens were entertaining the possibility that maybe they should talk first even though they would definitely be junior partners in any coalition.
Technically, they key person is the President (head of state). It's a little bit like the Queen of England, where the President is the only one with the authority to submit a Chancellor candidate to parliament. What this means, and this has worked out quite well historically, is that if negotiations are not coming to a solution; the President might step in and use his popular prestige to bang heads together and publicly call out parties to get going on forming a government.
For ages I thought this was regulated by law or something, I thought the party that wins is the first to be able to build a government. Alas, it ain't so. If the CDU can agree on something with Greens and FDP, Olaf Scholz and the SPD are the odd man out here, no matter if they have the most votes or not.
Can't find a graph for my district (Düsseldorf II) like honovere or evilthecat.
The odds are favoring two arrangements at the moment:
SPD(Red)-Greens-FDP(Yellow). The "traffic light".
CDU(Black)-Greens-FDP(Yellow). "Jamaica".
So really, it comes down to with whom the environmentalists and liberals can work better. Absolutely fascinating. SPD/CDU is mathematically possible, but that's been running for so long that nobody wants a repeat.
Austrian politics are insane: I tried to follow it a little bit when the Ibiza-tapes came out, but it seems like Austria just combined a Western European society with Eastern European politicians. I'm not even surprised that a commy party got a lot of votes in Graz, they'll probably lose them all next election after some new exotic scandal.
Also: Graz is the second largest city in Austria, but it is just a medium sized city in a country with only one actual big city. Graz is eight times smaller than Vienna. Imagine if the second largest city in the UK was Sheffield.
i wouldnt put SPD more to the left than the greens and i would consider the FDP more right leaning than the CDU.
my voting district is incredibly despressing:
CSU still in despite cronyism, AFD gains voters because ... ???
Well, CSU cronyism is at least locally focused. That might help with their voting block. Still some major losses. Sadly to the even more right wing it seems.
+9% for FDP here, blegh
Huh, last night's numbers were apparently completely off?
This is what I currently see
Sailing a convoy into the Baltic Sea would of been suicide.
Like I get that during and after the war the Allies kinda abandoned Poland, and maybe they could of made it more clear what their plans were but the French had based their entire strategy around defensive (which is good, France had a smaller population and couldn't bleed troops in offensive actions against Germany) and Britian again had downsized their army.
Any force that made it to Poland would of ended up captured or destroyed. I think the speed of the attack caught a lot of people off guard as nations like Serbia and Romania were able to hold off Central Powers for a much longer time.
Edit: it's also a little unfair to say France folded like a lawn chair. I think people forget how much she was crippled by the First World War, combined with some really bad leadership.
France also didn't have the strategic deapth of say, the USSR. Once the majority of the French Army was encircled and destroyed along side seeing the most populous and industrialized part of your nation capture the war was over.
Not to relitigate ww2, but a Soviet Union style defense in depth was exactly how France won WW1 (the Soviets were very inspired by Ferdinand Foch defeating the Germans before and tried to implement his war strategy as much as possible.)
The problem with WW2 is that France went from a defense in depth strategy to a strategy of static defense, and it just flat out didn’t work in the context of 20th century warfare. A soviet style withdrawing defense was possible in France, because thats exactly what happened in WW1 when the French defeated the Kaiserschlacht.
If anything I think the historical narrative overstates the performance of the German forces (which at no point in the war were anywhere near as good in reality as a lot of the historical narrative attributes them to be) and understates how much the French (and British) underperformed in the early stages of the war compared with what they should have been capable of on paper. (I remember at one point the HoI developers talking about how they had to literally fudge Germany and the allies strength at the beginning of WW2 because if they went by historical numbers and orders of battle an AI Germany would often straight up lose the initial invasion to AI France and Britain, which spoiled the game if you were playing US or USSR.)
I disagree with this assessment but I'll leave it at that.
Early numbers in Germany have CDU and SPD within less than a percentage point. Fuck. That's way too close for my liking. I can't deal with the possibility of 4 years of Armin Laschet as chancellor.
As someone who got to cast his first-ever U.S. presidential vote between Biden and Trump: all the German candidates seem ultimately fine. No one who's trying to burn down the republic among the three.
Comparing European democracies to other countries is kind of useless. We're all hoping for a better country, not just for a country that's only slightly better than a country where armed terrorists stormed government buildings.
To be fair, I wouldn't have imagined such a thing happening 5 years ago. And even then I felt it would a wake up call to the country.
The rise of right wing populism in Europe has been a troubling mirror to our politics over here. Don't make the same mistake in thinking you are immune to something like that happening.
+4
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Sailing a convoy into the Baltic Sea would of been suicide.
Like I get that during and after the war the Allies kinda abandoned Poland, and maybe they could of made it more clear what their plans were but the French had based their entire strategy around defensive (which is good, France had a smaller population and couldn't bleed troops in offensive actions against Germany) and Britian again had downsized their army.
Any force that made it to Poland would of ended up captured or destroyed. I think the speed of the attack caught a lot of people off guard as nations like Serbia and Romania were able to hold off Central Powers for a much longer time.
Edit: it's also a little unfair to say France folded like a lawn chair. I think people forget how much she was crippled by the First World War, combined with some really bad leadership.
France also didn't have the strategic deapth of say, the USSR. Once the majority of the French Army was encircled and destroyed along side seeing the most populous and industrialized part of your nation capture the war was over.
Not to relitigate ww2, but a Soviet Union style defense in depth was exactly how France won WW1 (the Soviets were very inspired by Ferdinand Foch defeating the Germans before and tried to implement his war strategy as much as possible.)
The problem with WW2 is that France went from a defense in depth strategy to a strategy of static defense, and it just flat out didn’t work in the context of 20th century warfare. A soviet style withdrawing defense was possible in France, because thats exactly what happened in WW1 when the French defeated the Kaiserschlacht.
If anything I think the historical narrative overstates the performance of the German forces (which at no point in the war were anywhere near as good in reality as a lot of the historical narrative attributes them to be) and understates how much the French (and British) underperformed in the early stages of the war compared with what they should have been capable of on paper. (I remember at one point the HoI developers talking about how they had to literally fudge Germany and the allies strength at the beginning of WW2 because if they went by historical numbers and orders of battle an AI Germany would often straight up lose the initial invasion to AI France and Britain, which spoiled the game if you were playing US or USSR.)
I disagree with this assessment but I'll leave it at that.
Early numbers in Germany have CDU and SPD within less than a percentage point. Fuck. That's way too close for my liking. I can't deal with the possibility of 4 years of Armin Laschet as chancellor.
As someone who got to cast his first-ever U.S. presidential vote between Biden and Trump: all the German candidates seem ultimately fine. No one who's trying to burn down the republic among the three.
Comparing European democracies to other countries is kind of useless. We're all hoping for a better country, not just for a country that's only slightly better than a country where armed terrorists stormed government buildings.
To be fair, I wouldn't have imagined such a thing happening 5 years ago. And even then I felt it would a wake up call to the country.
The rise of right wing populism in Europe has been a troubling mirror to our politics over here. Don't make the same mistake in thinking you are immune to something like that happening.
The right wings are all communicating and strategizing, which is one reason why it all seems to be coordinated.
Early numbers in Germany have CDU and SPD within less than a percentage point. Fuck. That's way too close for my liking. I can't deal with the possibility of 4 years of Armin Laschet as chancellor. With either Merz or Lindner as finance minister. God help us.
Greens are also underperforming compared to polling and the Left is scraping the 5% line. They might not make it into the parliament.
In Germany, if a party doesn't get more than 5% nationally, they won't get into parliament, right?
Almost. It's a mixed-member proportionality (MMP) system. Two votes, one for a first-past-the-post candidate (FPtP) in your district. Another (more important) vote for a party that determines overall proportional representation in parliament.
If you manage a FPtP victory in any district, the directly-elected candidate is seated even if the party as a whole doesn't manage 5%.
To add to this because it actually happened:
The Left didn't manage to beat the 5% threshold (4.9%). They won three direct mandates though, so those are in. But because the won at least 3 direct mandates another clause takes affect that states if you win three direct mandates you get proportional seats according to the second vote result anyway even if you are below 5%. So in the end the Left gets 39 seats instead of 3.
And because election math is wonky, they now have actually 5.3% of the seats in parliament. This is important because 5% of seats is also a threshold over which the party can form a parliamentary group which affords more parliamentary rights and more financial support.
Rats about The Left managing to trigger the 5% escape clause. We are getting so close to having them be nigh irrelevant. Let's do the AfD in too.
For the record, I think both those more extreme splinter parties are a mistake in Germany. The system worked better with just CDU, SPD, FDP, and the Greens as the major parties. On a systemic level, I blame the electoral reforms 10 years ago. It used to be that if parties won more seats through the FPtP vote than the proportional vote, they received the higher number of seats.
That gave a little boost to the big parties' number of seats, giving you a little more of a mix between the stability of FPtP and the multi-party system of proportionality. In addition, it allowed you to split your votes in interesting ways. I would typically vote FPtP CDU but proportional FDP, thereby supporting my favorite coalition arrangement.
Now the little parties receive extra seats to balance any excess FPtP victories of the big parties. This results in a more fragmented system, less clear winners, and a more bloated parliament. But by far the worst result is that it allows for the big parties to fragment. The FPtP boost used to make it so that SPD/The Left and CDU/AfD would have a big incentive to stay together as a big tent, which kept the extremists under control. A former CDU party head (Strauß) used to sum it up: "There can be no democratically legitimate party to the right of the CDU."
So you want the CSU/CDU appeal to the far right more? And put the the already splintered Left under the bigger tent of the SPD?
But I would also never want a black-yellow coalition, for a starter the finance policies would be insane with the current crop of financial "experts" like Merz and possibly Lindner as finance minister. We also don't really need to increase the wealth gap even further.
So you want the CSU/CDU appeal to the far right more? And put the the already splintered Left under the bigger tent of the SPD?
Not every AFD voter is a far right voter. I'd say, if Markus Soeder (CSU boss and prime minister of Bavaria) was the candidate, they would have peeled of quite a few AFD voters, who were on the fence and not dyed in the wool far right Nazi-sympathisers.
As for the Left - that "uh, far-left extremism" boogey man is what needs to be buried. The amount of "Please vote for us or you get a left-leaning coalition" fearmongering speeches by CDU politicians was quite pathetic. Even in defeat, they can't let that one rest.
Rats about The Left managing to trigger the 5% escape clause. We are getting so close to having them be nigh irrelevant. Let's do the AfD in too.
For the record, I think both those more extreme splinter parties are a mistake in Germany. The system worked better with just CDU, SPD, FDP, and the Greens as the major parties. On a systemic level, I blame the electoral reforms 10 years ago. It used to be that if parties won more seats through the FPtP vote than the proportional vote, they received the higher number of seats.
That gave a little boost to the big parties' number of seats, giving you a little more of a mix between the stability of FPtP and the multi-party system of proportionality. In addition, it allowed you to split your votes in interesting ways. I would typically vote FPtP CDU but proportional FDP, thereby supporting my favorite coalition arrangement.
Now the little parties receive extra seats to balance any excess FPtP victories of the big parties. This results in a more fragmented system, less clear winners, and a more bloated parliament. But by far the worst result is that it allows for the big parties to fragment. The FPtP boost used to make it so that SPD/The Left and CDU/AfD would have a big incentive to stay together as a big tent, which kept the extremists under control. A former CDU party head (Strauß) used to sum it up: "There can be no democratically legitimate party to the right of the CDU."
That is an interesting perspective.
In the last election here in Norway (last month) I could feasibly vote for five different parties whose views had significant (>65%) overlap with my views and had a shot at MPs. (All of them did get MPs, but voting for one of them would have been a waste given the electoral system).
I like having that choice. It has made getting a coalition going harder, but since you don't need an absolute majority to form a government it's not that big of a deal.
So you want the CSU/CDU appeal to the far right more? And put the the already splintered Left under the bigger tent of the SPD?
Not every AFD voter is a far right voter. I'd say, if Markus Soeder (CSU boss and prime minister of Bavaria) was the candidate, they would have peeled of quite a few AFD voters, who were on the fence and not dyed in the wool far right Nazi-sympathisers.
As for the Left - that "uh, far-left extremism" boogey man is what needs to be buried. The amount of "Please vote for us or you get a left-leaning coalition" fearmongering speeches by CDU politicians was quite pathetic. Even in defeat, they can't let that one rest.
Yeah the other half of the afd voters aren't racists but q-anon loonies and rich people who don't think the FDPs tax breaks go far enough.
They aren't stellar examples of humanity.
So you want the CSU/CDU appeal to the far right more? And put the the already splintered Left under the bigger tent of the SPD?
Exactly! I think the SPD and the CDU are too close to the middle. Heck, the CDU calls itself "the middle" all the time now. This leaves breathing room for competitive far-right and far-left parties that I do not like existing. And if the CDU and SPD are so close that they make a grand coalition, democratic choice is impaired.
I preferred a world where the SPD and the CDU were really big "people's parties" (like the Dems and Pubs in the U.S.). And then you had the not-quite-traditional left/right Greens and FDP to give some orthogonal choices. As the party leader of the FDP remarked yesterday, whoever becomes chancellor, three quarters of Germans will not have voted for him.
The big "people's parties" Dems und Pubs seem to do a real shitty job at reigning in extremism within their own party (Pubs) or at getting anything done (Dems) so not a great example I think. Smaller parties can also provide options for people who don't get much attention from the center ones and drive democratic engagment.
Also just because the CDU calls itself the middle doesn't mean that they are. See the red-scare-mongering they've been doing, they included the FDP! in their doomsaying.
The Lindner quote is a bit nonsense I think, because if that was his actual position than nobody should vote for the FDP as they don't even have a candidate for chancellor so voting for them just illegitimates any chancellor and only any party that gets an absolute majority should be allowed to provide the chancellor.
So you want the CSU/CDU appeal to the far right more? And put the the already splintered Left under the bigger tent of the SPD?
Exactly! I think the SPD and the CDU are too close to the middle. Heck, the CDU calls itself "the middle" all the time now. This leaves breathing room for competitive far-right and far-left parties that I do not like existing. And if the CDU and SPD are so close that they make a grand coalition, democratic choice is impaired.
I preferred a world where the SPD and the CDU were really big "people's parties" (like the Dems and Pubs in the U.S.). And then you had the not-quite-traditional left/right Greens and FDP to give some orthogonal choices. As the party leader of the FDP remarked yesterday, whoever becomes chancellor, three quarters of Germans will not have voted for him.
A majority of them will have voted for representatives who in turn voted to support him. At least that's how I understand parliamentary government to work.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
so as someone who doesn't follow EU politics as much as maybe I should, were the election results good or bad? Hearing the left lost votes but the greens gained (to me) seems like six of one and half dozen of the other because in the US, the left are the environmental party in general (though they are not the green party)
in short, was there a maga takeover of germany or did the more sane of parties prevail?
so as someone who doesn't follow EU politics as much as maybe I should, were the election results good or bad? Hearing the left lost votes but the greens gained (to me) seems like six of one and half dozen of the other because in the US, the left are the environmental party in general (though they are not the green party)
in short, was there a maga takeover of germany or did the more sane of parties prevail?
Pretty sane. I encourage you to read a summary on NPR or some other mostly neutral American news outlet to get a bit of context about the results.
so as someone who doesn't follow EU politics as much as maybe I should, were the election results good or bad? Hearing the left lost votes but the greens gained (to me) seems like six of one and half dozen of the other because in the US, the left are the environmental party in general (though they are not the green party)
in short, was there a maga takeover of germany or did the more sane of parties prevail?
Pretty sane. I encourage you to read a summary on NPR or some other mostly neutral American news outlet to get a bit of context about the results.
As another American without any real context other than what I've been reading, my takeaway is "neutral so far, context will depend on which parties form the government."
Rats about The Left managing to trigger the 5% escape clause. We are getting so close to having them be nigh irrelevant. Let's do the AfD in too.
For the record, I think both those more extreme splinter parties are a mistake in Germany. The system worked better with just CDU, SPD, FDP, and the Greens as the major parties. On a systemic level, I blame the electoral reforms 10 years ago. It used to be that if parties won more seats through the FPtP vote than the proportional vote, they received the higher number of seats.
That gave a little boost to the big parties' number of seats, giving you a little more of a mix between the stability of FPtP and the multi-party system of proportionality. In addition, it allowed you to split your votes in interesting ways. I would typically vote FPtP CDU but proportional FDP, thereby supporting my favorite coalition arrangement.
Now the little parties receive extra seats to balance any excess FPtP victories of the big parties. This results in a more fragmented system, less clear winners, and a more bloated parliament. But by far the worst result is that it allows for the big parties to fragment. The FPtP boost used to make it so that SPD/The Left and CDU/AfD would have a big incentive to stay together as a big tent, which kept the extremists under control. A former CDU party head (Strauß) used to sum it up: "There can be no democratically legitimate party to the right of the CDU."
I know little to nothing about The Left, but why do you put it alongside AfD in the "must be exterminated" basket? Just too hard socialist for you in general or more specific reasons for this level of opposition?
Rats about The Left managing to trigger the 5% escape clause. We are getting so close to having them be nigh irrelevant. Let's do the AfD in too.
For the record, I think both those more extreme splinter parties are a mistake in Germany. The system worked better with just CDU, SPD, FDP, and the Greens as the major parties. On a systemic level, I blame the electoral reforms 10 years ago. It used to be that if parties won more seats through the FPtP vote than the proportional vote, they received the higher number of seats.
That gave a little boost to the big parties' number of seats, giving you a little more of a mix between the stability of FPtP and the multi-party system of proportionality. In addition, it allowed you to split your votes in interesting ways. I would typically vote FPtP CDU but proportional FDP, thereby supporting my favorite coalition arrangement.
Now the little parties receive extra seats to balance any excess FPtP victories of the big parties. This results in a more fragmented system, less clear winners, and a more bloated parliament. But by far the worst result is that it allows for the big parties to fragment. The FPtP boost used to make it so that SPD/The Left and CDU/AfD would have a big incentive to stay together as a big tent, which kept the extremists under control. A former CDU party head (Strauß) used to sum it up: "There can be no democratically legitimate party to the right of the CDU."
I know little to nothing about The Left, but why do you put it alongside AfD in the "must be exterminated" basket? Just too hard socialist for you in general or more specific reasons for this level of opposition?
While they are too socialist for me personally, the reason I want them gone is almost the opposite. The Left was the first of the splinter parties. It weakened the center-left SPD so much, that the center-right CDU was basically unbeatable.
Rinse and repeat with the AfD on the right and now both mainstream parties are weak and pushed towards the center. Only grand coalitions between them work now, or 3+ party coalitions.
I don’t think this splintering is good for Germany’s democracy. I don’t think the completely FPtP system in the U.S., where the parties have even given up control over selecting their candidates, is that good either.
I like a mix of FPtP and proportionality, where you end up with two dominant parties (coalitions formed before the election) plus some small party choice (coalitions formed after the election). And I don’t want one party always in power, even if it’s my preferred party.
The coalition talks after last month's election in Norway has collapsed. AP (labor) SV (socialists) and SP (rural populists) had a collective absolute majority but could not come to an agreement. SV (socialists) have withdrawn from the discussion; they were the smallest of the three parties.
Discussions will continue between AP (labor) and SP (rural populists). Likely result is a minority government with those two, who will have to seek help from various parties on a case-by-case basis. (This is not uncommon in Norwegian politics.)
Personally, I am disappointed. I voted for SV (socialists) so that they could moderate the rural populists in SP w.r.t. (among other things) the environment. It's possible the new likely government will simply choose to ignore the socialists and go to more industry-friendly parties.
Lars Vilks, the cartoonist of the famous Mohamed-cartoons, has died in a car crash. He was 75 years old. He was escorted by two officers in a police vehicle, they are also dead. It is unknown what happened, but the car ended up on the wrong side of the road and had a collision with a lorry.
Dutch media isn't calling it an attack, but it sure sounds suspicious as fuck. Vilks has survived other attacks and police has protected him since 2007. During one attack another bystander was killed, people who have displayed the cartoons have also been the target of terrorists.
Posts
It's probably either SPD with Greens and FDP, or CDU/CSU with Greens and FDP.
Greens and FDP are are already stating that they want to talk with each other before talking to either CDU or SPD.
Last election CDU was in talks with Greens and FDP when the liberals crashed the talks out of the blue sky and we ended up with 4 more years of CDU/SPD as coalition.
Cologne II contains the wealthier parts in the southwest, that's it basically I think.
They're less strong in Cologne I and III. Still the biggest gains of all parties compared to the last election.
Practically, everybody can talk with everybody and figure it out. For example, in this fascinating live show I am watching, the FDP and Greens were entertaining the possibility that maybe they should talk first even though they would definitely be junior partners in any coalition.
Technically, they key person is the President (head of state). It's a little bit like the Queen of England, where the President is the only one with the authority to submit a Chancellor candidate to parliament. What this means, and this has worked out quite well historically, is that if negotiations are not coming to a solution; the President might step in and use his popular prestige to bang heads together and publicly call out parties to get going on forming a government.
they went a little too far with the hippy pacifism. They kinda shat in their own bed there
For ages I thought this was regulated by law or something, I thought the party that wins is the first to be able to build a government. Alas, it ain't so. If the CDU can agree on something with Greens and FDP, Olaf Scholz and the SPD are the odd man out here, no matter if they have the most votes or not.
Can't find a graph for my district (Düsseldorf II) like honovere or evilthecat.
SPD(Red)-Greens-FDP(Yellow). The "traffic light".
CDU(Black)-Greens-FDP(Yellow). "Jamaica".
So really, it comes down to with whom the environmentalists and liberals can work better. Absolutely fascinating. SPD/CDU is mathematically possible, but that's been running for so long that nobody wants a repeat.
A german government formed with ankward coalitions that can't take clear policy decisions is great...for everybody not in Germany.
"The Communist Party of Austria has just become the strongest party in Graz, Austria's 2nd biggest city, paving the way for a KPÖ-Greens-SD coalition"
Also: Graz is the second largest city in Austria, but it is just a medium sized city in a country with only one actual big city. Graz is eight times smaller than Vienna. Imagine if the second largest city in the UK was Sheffield.
Huh, last night's numbers were apparently completely off?
This is what I currently see
I disagree with this assessment but I'll leave it at that.
To be fair, I wouldn't have imagined such a thing happening 5 years ago. And even then I felt it would a wake up call to the country.
The rise of right wing populism in Europe has been a troubling mirror to our politics over here. Don't make the same mistake in thinking you are immune to something like that happening.
The right wings are all communicating and strategizing, which is one reason why it all seems to be coordinated.
To add to this because it actually happened:
The Left didn't manage to beat the 5% threshold (4.9%). They won three direct mandates though, so those are in. But because the won at least 3 direct mandates another clause takes affect that states if you win three direct mandates you get proportional seats according to the second vote result anyway even if you are below 5%. So in the end the Left gets 39 seats instead of 3.
And because election math is wonky, they now have actually 5.3% of the seats in parliament. This is important because 5% of seats is also a threshold over which the party can form a parliamentary group which affords more parliamentary rights and more financial support.
For the record, I think both those more extreme splinter parties are a mistake in Germany. The system worked better with just CDU, SPD, FDP, and the Greens as the major parties. On a systemic level, I blame the electoral reforms 10 years ago. It used to be that if parties won more seats through the FPtP vote than the proportional vote, they received the higher number of seats.
That gave a little boost to the big parties' number of seats, giving you a little more of a mix between the stability of FPtP and the multi-party system of proportionality. In addition, it allowed you to split your votes in interesting ways. I would typically vote FPtP CDU but proportional FDP, thereby supporting my favorite coalition arrangement.
Now the little parties receive extra seats to balance any excess FPtP victories of the big parties. This results in a more fragmented system, less clear winners, and a more bloated parliament. But by far the worst result is that it allows for the big parties to fragment. The FPtP boost used to make it so that SPD/The Left and CDU/AfD would have a big incentive to stay together as a big tent, which kept the extremists under control. A former CDU party head (Strauß) used to sum it up: "There can be no democratically legitimate party to the right of the CDU."
But I would also never want a black-yellow coalition, for a starter the finance policies would be insane with the current crop of financial "experts" like Merz and possibly Lindner as finance minister. We also don't really need to increase the wealth gap even further.
Not every AFD voter is a far right voter. I'd say, if Markus Soeder (CSU boss and prime minister of Bavaria) was the candidate, they would have peeled of quite a few AFD voters, who were on the fence and not dyed in the wool far right Nazi-sympathisers.
As for the Left - that "uh, far-left extremism" boogey man is what needs to be buried. The amount of "Please vote for us or you get a left-leaning coalition" fearmongering speeches by CDU politicians was quite pathetic. Even in defeat, they can't let that one rest.
That is an interesting perspective.
In the last election here in Norway (last month) I could feasibly vote for five different parties whose views had significant (>65%) overlap with my views and had a shot at MPs. (All of them did get MPs, but voting for one of them would have been a waste given the electoral system).
I like having that choice. It has made getting a coalition going harder, but since you don't need an absolute majority to form a government it's not that big of a deal.
Yeah it was absolutely pathetic.
They aren't stellar examples of humanity.
Laschet should really take a step back and think for a moment though. he sounds like Schröder in 2005. Just continuing to ignore the actual results.
Exactly! I think the SPD and the CDU are too close to the middle. Heck, the CDU calls itself "the middle" all the time now. This leaves breathing room for competitive far-right and far-left parties that I do not like existing. And if the CDU and SPD are so close that they make a grand coalition, democratic choice is impaired.
I preferred a world where the SPD and the CDU were really big "people's parties" (like the Dems and Pubs in the U.S.). And then you had the not-quite-traditional left/right Greens and FDP to give some orthogonal choices. As the party leader of the FDP remarked yesterday, whoever becomes chancellor, three quarters of Germans will not have voted for him.
Also just because the CDU calls itself the middle doesn't mean that they are. See the red-scare-mongering they've been doing, they included the FDP! in their doomsaying.
The Lindner quote is a bit nonsense I think, because if that was his actual position than nobody should vote for the FDP as they don't even have a candidate for chancellor so voting for them just illegitimates any chancellor and only any party that gets an absolute majority should be allowed to provide the chancellor.
A majority of them will have voted for representatives who in turn voted to support him. At least that's how I understand parliamentary government to work.
in short, was there a maga takeover of germany or did the more sane of parties prevail?
When has anything bad ever happened in the Balkans?
(He said, sarcastically.)
Pretty sane. I encourage you to read a summary on NPR or some other mostly neutral American news outlet to get a bit of context about the results.
As another American without any real context other than what I've been reading, my takeaway is "neutral so far, context will depend on which parties form the government."
Mostly seems like posturing. NATO still has peace keeping troops in the region and I expect Serbia doesn't want a second show down with them.
Which is never, ever going to happen and hopelessly naive.
That and some of their members do stupid things like support the current Russian goverment out of some old nostalgia for the USSR.
While they are too socialist for me personally, the reason I want them gone is almost the opposite. The Left was the first of the splinter parties. It weakened the center-left SPD so much, that the center-right CDU was basically unbeatable.
Rinse and repeat with the AfD on the right and now both mainstream parties are weak and pushed towards the center. Only grand coalitions between them work now, or 3+ party coalitions.
I don’t think this splintering is good for Germany’s democracy. I don’t think the completely FPtP system in the U.S., where the parties have even given up control over selecting their candidates, is that good either.
I like a mix of FPtP and proportionality, where you end up with two dominant parties (coalitions formed before the election) plus some small party choice (coalitions formed after the election). And I don’t want one party always in power, even if it’s my preferred party.
tl;dr: Weimar Republic
Discussions will continue between AP (labor) and SP (rural populists). Likely result is a minority government with those two, who will have to seek help from various parties on a case-by-case basis. (This is not uncommon in Norwegian politics.)
Personally, I am disappointed. I voted for SV (socialists) so that they could moderate the rural populists in SP w.r.t. (among other things) the environment. It's possible the new likely government will simply choose to ignore the socialists and go to more industry-friendly parties.
Dutch media isn't calling it an attack, but it sure sounds suspicious as fuck. Vilks has survived other attacks and police has protected him since 2007. During one attack another bystander was killed, people who have displayed the cartoons have also been the target of terrorists.