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Ah, Schulz - German general election, 2017

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    #26
    First seat estimates:

    CDU/CSU 220
    SPD 137
    AfD 87
    FDP 67
    Greens 61
    Linke 59

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      #27
      Originally posted by G-Man View Post
      Ursula von der Leyen
      That sounds proper aristocracy.

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        #28
        Grumpy old man alert! Gender gap in party vote, courtesy of Europe Elects: + indicating a greater male vote:

        AfD +7
        FDP +3
        Linke 0
        SPD 0
        Grüne -7
        CDU/CSU -7

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          #29
          Former DDR vote share:

          CDU/CSU 26.5%
          AfD 21.5%
          Linke 16.5%
          SPD 14.5%
          FDP 8%
          Grüne 6%

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            #30
            The AfD apparently won with men in the former DDR.

            They want stronger borders, they can have the old DDR border back.

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              #31
              Mauer im Kopf, innit.

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                #32
                Originally posted by antoine polus View Post
                It's almost as if running an career technocrat party insider as your candidate for head of government doesn't inspire the electorate.

                Who could have seen this coming...
                Schulz ran a decent campaign. The SPD always was fucked because they couldn't define themselves as an alternative due to being the junior partner if the coalition government.

                The AfD's success is, quite clearly, a reaction to immigration. In 1932 the NSDAP profited from a disastrous economy; in 2017 their successors profited despite a booming economy. Like Brexit and Trump, their electoral success is the fruit of a middle-class culture war. Why that culture war finds such strong expression among east Germans merits inspection. One explanation might be that the old DDR, with its closed borders and minimal immigration, was so insular and is therefore culturally less open than the west, which has got used to immigration since the 1960s (though not always happily, so the AfD has ears there too)..

                They AfD's success is depressing, but I predict they will fade away again, as it often is with protest movements. They were internally so divided even before the election; the taste of power will do the rest.

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                  #33
                  Varoufakis linking Afd with Merkel putting down "the Greek Spring". What a buffoon.

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                    #34
                    He's not a buffoon - the AfD took 470 00 votes from the SPD and 400 000 from die Linke.

                    Schäuble's version of Austerity has a huge amount to do with that.


                    Frauke Petry has left the AfD

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                      #35
                      The AfD thought Schauble was too liberal with the "Greek Spring".

                      They're culture warriors, like Trump and Kippers.

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                        #36
                        The overwhelming narrative that people round here get about Germany is that everyone hates Merkel because of the one million Syrians and that there is rampant unchecked crime on the streets of the country also because of the one million Syrians. Two relatively intelligent people have expressed surprise to me today that she's been reelected after all that. I have been forced to point out that as the only party which is anti-immigrant scored 13% of the vote it must mean that the "news" that people are reading here is actually not true, and that Germany has not actually collapsed into some form of sharia-anarchy.

                        People are fucked up.

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                          #37
                          The economy in Germany is booming if you are a large industrial corporation. In the same way the US economy is booming if you are a large US tech company. But your average German factory worker is on shite wages (to outcompete the French and Italians). Minimum wage in Germany is 8 euros per hour.

                          The story in Germany is essentially the same as everywhere else. The working class has been thrown under the bus by social democrats. The working class are being shafted, but are unsure how. So when some AfD comes along and says they will make Germany great again, well why not.

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                            #38
                            Indeed. I think it was Gauland who said yesterday that the AfD will 'take back our country and our people'. Whatever that might mean.

                            It's a depressing turn of events but in now way unexpected, and in fact the reaction/uproar is more surprising than the results. Massive protest vote for the AfD, which largely seems to be the result of fear and resentment. The AfD have concentrated on these two themes and very successfully made this election campaign about immigration and THE OTHERS, and the major parties have been unwilling or unable to come up with a coherent response to that, without falling over the precipice into the foaming sea of populist hatred, which the AfD hopes will wash away all the foreign muck that is holding Germany back. It's as if the whole UKIP/Brexit/immigration dynamic was just sooooo last year and not at all relevant to the political climate in Germany, so the CDU/CSU and SPD have concentrated on fighting for the centre ground and have left huge swathes open to the left, but mainly to the right.

                            The voices of anger and rage have also been loud enough to ensure that other topics such as education (should it remain the responsibility of the states, or become subject to federal control, and how to make a system that is very much aimed at training a large industrial workforce with jobs for life flexible enough to deal with economic and industrial changes), financial policy (taxation, particularly the familiar situation whereby major corporations receive tax breaks while people in the 25-40 age bracket are hit disproportionately hard on their payslip, the continuing insistency on austerity when tax receipts are high and interest rates remain stubbornly low but investment in infrastructure is being reduced) and foreign policy (not just Syria/Mediterranean immigration but also the future of the EU, the tension with Russia, how to deal with a man called Trump) have all fallen by the wayside.

                            At least voter turnout was up. Just a shame that I now have to start playing the 'who voted AfD' game whenever we talk to friends and family.

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                              #39
                              erm real wage growth in Germany was 1.9% in 2014, 2.4% in 2015, and 1.8% in 2016. To put that in context, That 2.4% in 2015 is the largest increase in real wages since the beginning of german statistics, and was largely as a result in the introduction of a federal minimum wage of 8.50, ramming up wages at the lower end, Real wages in germany are rising as quickly as at any time in their history, particularly for people at the lower end of the income distribution. So whatever it is, it's not that.

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                                #40
                                Germany is a rapidly ageing country, isn't it? That'll help hard right populists.

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                                  #41
                                  Would Merkel being like May on immigration have cooked the AfD goose? I know it doesn't necessarily work like that but as JVL said, there sure was "space".

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                                    #42
                                    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                    Two relatively intelligent people have expressed surprise to me today that she's been reelected after all that. I have been forced to point out that as the only party which is anti-immigrant scored 13% of the vote it must mean that the "news" that people are reading here is actually not true, and that Germany has not actually collapsed into some form of sharia-anarchy.
                                    Well, that's it, isn't it? If you grant the anti-immigrant Kulkturkampf a generous slice of CSU voters and a sprinkling of tiny party votes, at worst 80% of Germans rejected the far-right. Germany's OK in ways that France, Britain, Holland and the US are not.

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                                      #43
                                      Starting when? I don't live there anymore, but my feeling is that that sharp a U-Turn after her championing of Willkommenskultur, would have been seen as cynical and insincere.

                                      They may be paywalled, but these charts and maps from the FT are very interesting.

                                      Where votes came from (for the AfD, notably from non-voters and those who voted for fringe parties last time)

                                      AfD gains in the East were precisely where there are the fewest immigrants.
                                      Last edited by ursus arctos; 25-09-2017, 15:58.

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                                        #44
                                        I meant had she not done Willkommenskultur at all. Not that it matters.

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                                          #45
                                          Genau, that's rather like asking what SYRIZA would be doing if there wasn't an economic crisis.

                                          Going back to the charts, they demonstrate that G-man's "generous slice of CSU voters and a sprinkling of tiny party votes" isn't really where the AfD got its votes from. Their largest bloc came from non-voters, then CSU/CDU, then Fringe Party voters, then SPD/Linke voters in roughly equal measures. There were about 1.2 million AfD voters who didn't vote at all last time, and almost 700,000 who voted for Fringe Parties.

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                                            #46
                                            Thank god that Ad Hoc, at least, has pointed out that in fact 87% of German voters didn't vote for the racist party - despite a million Syrian refugees being welcomed into the country.

                                            Which is way better than 52% who voted to shut Britain's borders, the 46% of Americans who voted for Trump, or even the 34% of French who voted for Marine Le Pen.

                                            Angela Merkel may not be the perfect politician, but thank god she's had the guts to actually stick to being mostly civilised rather than throw dog whistly anti-foreigner shit as soon as the winds of "resentment" from the racist community started getting louder.

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                                              #47
                                              Originally posted by G-Man View Post
                                              Well, that's it, isn't it? If you grant the anti-immigrant Kulkturkampf a generous slice of CSU voters and a sprinkling of tiny party votes, at worst 80% of Germans rejected the far-right. Germany's OK in ways that France, Britain, Holland and the US are not.
                                              How does that work exactly? Geert Wilders received 13.1% of the vote in the elections earlier this year.

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                                                #48
                                                Germany is a rapidly ageing country, isn't it? That'll help hard right populists.
                                                Well, statistically people tend to get a bit more right wing and less open as they get older, so each generation might be more likely to vote AfD as they age. But it's certainly not the old who are to blame for the AfD's breakthrough into the Bundestag. I can't find it now, but I read somewhere in the last 24 hours that the AfD vote was lowest amongst the oldest (>70) age group, and highest [Edit: wrong, sorry] amongst the youngest age group. Which may be a peculiarity of Germany, with older people having longer memories of the post-war guilt thing (or, in the case of the oldest portion of that oldest cohort, actual memories of living under the Nazis). The psephological problem in Germany isn't old people, it's that those old people, the liberal generation, will die out.

                                                Edit: so, in conclusion, if Germany is "rapidly ageing", in the sense that people are living longer, and fewer younger people coming through, that is actually bad for the AfD due to the younger generations being more right wing than the old.
                                                Last edited by Evariste Euler Gauss; 25-09-2017, 20:12.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Cheers. I couldn't find age breakdown.

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                                                    #50
                                                    It is a bit down the page here

                                                    AfD actually did best among the middle aged, while the over 60s went primarily for the traditional parties.

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