Elections in Germany

[Edric O]

Today, the most populous nation in the European Union goes to the polls. If you are not familiar with German politics, click here for a quick overview of the five main parties. Basically, they are as follows:

CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union) - Conservatives in the tradition of Konrad Adenauer, the architect of Germany's "social market economy".

SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) - Social democrats. And not just any social democrats; the SPD, founded in 1875, invented social democracy. Its members included such people as Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky, and it was once the bulwark of the international socialist movement. But that was a hundred years ago. Today the SPD is a pale shadow of its former self, barely distinguishable from the CDU/CSU in its policies.

FDP (Free Democratic Party) - Free-market liberals. Enough said.

Die Gr

[veK]

There's only one party you can really vote for: The Pirate Party

They originated from the swedish pirate partei and over the last couple of months they got more and more supporters. I'd really be glad if they made it over 5% so they have something to say in the parliament over the next 4 years as things are really turning to the worse here with censorship, controls and surveillance and we also need drastic overall changes in some fields like for example the education system.

[Edric O]

The problem with the Pirate Party is that they can only be a protest vote, since they're certainly not going to get into the Bundestag. I have no objection to protest votes in general - I've cast a lot of them myself - but I think they're a bad idea when the main parties or alliances are so close in the polls that every vote for one of them can count.

As a general rule, I only cast a protest vote when the opinion polls say that one of the main parties or alliances has a clear lead over the others, so that my vote for the main parties would not make a difference.

In this election, it was really unclear if the CDU/CSU-FDP alliance could get enough votes to govern, so it was important to vote for any other main party (SPD, Greens, Left) in order to keep the FDP out of government.

Unfortunately, with exit polls coming in, it looks like the CDU/CSU-FDP alliance won a narrow majority. Damn. But, on the bright side, both Die Linke and the Green Party significantly increased their share of the vote. And Merkel may have won, but she won by losing... her party got less votes than four years ago. She only won because the SPD's support collapsed much further than her own.

[Anathema]

Shameless copying from the other thread:

Given the political landscape of Germany I'd personally prefer a "purple" coalition (liberals and social democrats) since I dislike christian democrats' date=' but I'd still take them before the crypto-leninists that make up half of Die Linke so I'm happy.[/quote']

Edric, to wich "half" of Die Linke do you feel the most sympathy?

[Wolf]

Whoa. Edric, maybe I'm totally inept at reading German elections returns, but it seems that, contrary to your assertion that the left was poised to make serious gains, the SDP got demolished--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2009

--am I actually reading this right, or is there something at play here that I'm missing? It seems the market-liberal FDP made the best gains of all...

[Edric O]

Final results:

Given the political landscape of Germany I'd personally prefer a "purple" coalition (liberals and social democrats) since I dislike christian democrats, but I'd still take them before the crypto-leninists that make up half of Die Linke so I'm happy.

Well, given that the liberals are yellow and the social democrats are red, surely you meant to say that you would have preferred an orange coalition, right? ;)

However, that's about as likely as Geert Wilders converting to Islam. The FDP is the party of business and of the rich, while the SPD still aims to be the party of the workers. The SPD may not be what it once was, but I'm sure they still have enough of a backbone left that they would not lower themselves to get in bed with liberal scum.

My stance somewhat mirrors yours: I despise christian democrats, but I'd still take them before liberals any day. At least christian democrats tend to have a bit of a social conscience. Liberals are the absolute worst (well, within mainstream politics, anyway; I'm not counting the NPD here).

Shameless copying from the other thread: Edric, to wich "half" of Die Linke do you feel the most sympathy?

The "crypto-leninists", of course. ;)

Whoa. Edric, maybe I'm totally inept at reading German elections returns, but it seems that, contrary to your assertion that the left was poised to make serious gains, the SDP got demolished--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2009

--am I actually reading this right, or is there something at play here that I'm missing? It seems the market-liberal FDP made the best gains of all...

...with the Greens and the Left Party close behind. When I said "the left" was poised to make serious gains, I was talking about Die Linke, the Left Party, not the SPD. The SPD was rightfully punished for its support of free market reforms over the past decade. Die Linke achieved the best result in its history and rose into double digits for the first time.

[Wolf]

Oops, you meant, The Left, not the left. My mistake.

[Edric O]

Well, if you count the left-wing side of the political spectrum as a whole (SPD+Greens+Left), then there was a net loss of 5.4% compared to 2005 - all of it due to the abysmal performance of the SPD. Meanwhile, the right-wing side (CDU/CSU+FDP) saw a net gain of 3.4%. The difference is due to a slight growth in the vote share of minor parties.

So, as you can see, in terms of left-vs-right politics, the shift is not exactly spectacular overall. But it is noteworthy that the centrist parties lost, and the more hardline parties on both left and right gained.

[Edric O]

I just realized that there were elections in Portugal this weekend as well, and, interestingly, the results follow exactly the same pattern as in Germany:

1. Major losses for the mainstream social democratic party.

2. Some gains for the right-wing parties, but only enough to account for about half of the losses suffered by the mainstream social democrats.

3. Major gains for the hardline left-wing parties, who took the other half of the votes lost by the social democrats.

The difference is that in Portugal, the various left-wing parties still hold a solid majority between them.

[veK]

The SPD may not be what it once was, but I'm sure they still have enough of a backbone left that they would not lower themselves to get in bed with liberal scum.

Actually there were discussion about this in the past. Not just this election. The plan was some kind of SPD / Greens / FDP.

See, the problem with germany is: no matter what you elect, you end up with the same assholes anyway because anybody is trying to achieve their goals and are almost willing to go in bed with whoever it takes just to form a coalition that has the majority. The system is bad enough (I don't call "you have the right to make 2 crosses every 4 years" a democracy) but also you have to accept this farce. I can only hope that our business will be running good until the next elections and I can finally leave this country because I doubt there will be a big revolution during the next 4 years.

[Edric O]

Actually there were discussion about this in the past. Not just this election. The plan was some kind of SPD / Greens / FDP.

See, the problem with germany is: no matter what you elect, you end up with the same assholes anyway because anybody is trying to achieve their goals and are almost willing to go in bed with whoever it takes just to form a coalition that has the majority. The system is bad enough (I don't call "you have the right to make 2 crosses every 4 years" a democracy) but also you have to accept this farce.

Unfortunately, it's the same all over the world, not just in Germany. Even the most "democratic" countries - such as Germany - are in desperate need of a lot more real democracy.

[veK]

I know it's a worldwide problem. Still there are some places you can go to that are much better (I don't mean luxury but better weather, less stupid people, a better understanding of what a society should behave like and so on...). Those places are obviously very rare.

But it's very exhausting to notice and worry about so many problems while most parts of society (or humanity for that matter) don't even notice them, believe everything the media tells them and maybe even mix in a bit (or a lot) of religion and still think everything isn't perfect but okay.

[Wolf]

Wait, "real democracy?" Come on. Upset because the parties you're partial to did a few percent worse than the other guy? This is what democracy looks like. Is it unsatisfying? Of course it is. In any population, the proportion of intelligent individuals will be outnumbered by the proportion of not-so-intelligent individuals. Someone has to fill out the bell curve. If the elections in Portual, Germany, the United States, or where-ever, piss you off, then advocate for a Platonic dictatorship, or stop complaining. I can't stand comments like, "we need some real democracy" when the fairest, most well-observed, well-counted, and most fairly counted democracies in the world have elections. This isn't like Zimbabwe, for crying out loud!

[Edric O]

Actually, I meant that the system is broken, no matter which party wins the elections. We should be voting much more often than just once every four years, and we should be voting directly on policy as often as possible - instead of electing some people to represent us and then praying for the next four years that they will keep their promises and do what they were elected to do.

The problem is not that the "wrong side" won. The problem is that the people have far too little influence on the actions of the government. We need less representation and more direct democracy.

[Wolf]

Could the system possibly sustain more elections? I know that in the United States, the problem is less systemic and more, if you will, economic: the individual, by virtue of the volume of other individuals voting, has virtually no effect on the system. Essentially, the current form of "democracy" is a trade-off between effective elections and representative/responsible elections, and it's almost direct. In order to have a functional government not in a perpetual state of campaigning (well, to be honest, that's pretty much what it is already) we have more infrequent elections. I don't think election frequency is the problem, I think it's the size of the institutions in question and the extremely, almost unimaginably, limited influence of an individual. Hence, why I thought an argument regarding the merits of a Platonic dictatorship would be more interesting, but alas... Edric never takes the bait. It's rough fishing over here, I hope you know that.

[veK]

I agree with Edric. I feel betrayed if I am told I live in a democracy but all I can do is vote every 4 years for a party which represents my opinions the most (which is a problem itself because usually I am lucky if I can agree to 50% of a party's program). Obviously I don't want to vote some people or parties more often but I want to decide on urgent matters for myself and I think everybody should. If you started voting for or against every smll issue it would become very annoying but at least major decisions should be made by the people and not a bunch of guys who call themselves politicians and are usually way too old to even care about the problem.

[Anathema]

, surely you meant to say that you would have preferred an orange coalition, right? ;)

However, that's about as likely as Geert Wilders converting to Islam. The FDP is the party of business and of the rich, while the SPD still aims to be the party of the workers. The SPD may not be what it once was, but I'm sure they still have enough of a backbone left that they would not lower themselves to get in bed with liberal scum.

My stance somewhat mirrors yours: I despise christian democrats, but I'd still take them before liberals any day. At least christian democrats tend to have a bit of a social conscience. Liberals are the absolute worst (well, within mainstream politics, anyway; I'm not counting the NPD here).

Blue is considered to be the colors of the liberals in the Netherlands and Belgium. Both countries have had such governments (link)

And Germany had an "orange" coalition in the years 1969-1982.

In the case of the Netherlands, the purple coalition was attacked viciously by Pim Fortuyn (in my opinion unfairly) so it's generally not viewed with nostalgia. However said coalition was generally fiscally responsible and pushed through some reforms that would never have happened with our Christian Democrats, like gay marriage.

Also, it's not necessarily true that you can only vote once every four years in a democracy. You people should move to Italy, where you can vote every other year  :D

[veK]

just a quick note on the colour thing: orange in germany is the pirate party.  ;)

[Dunenewt]

Hmm...from what I've heard the Pirate party isn't too far away from the FDP in some respects.  My local area still has the old Ampel coaltion in the city I think.  Strong gains for Die Linke but I think that was mainly migrating SPD voters who were frustrated, and but didn't want to vote FDP/CDU rather than people who generally believed in Die Linke's policies. 

Blue is the colour of the CSU I think, because the Bayern flag is white and blue.