The preliminary results of Germany’s national election are rolling in. What’s sure is that Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU party is the winner, with projections showing them currently capturing a massive 42.5% of the votes.
Preliminary, early results show the Greens (Grüne) collapsing to 8% (2009: 11%) thus eliminating the possibility of a socialist/green coalition government made up of the SPD/Greens. Source: www.tagesschau.de
The Green Party is among the big losers, with early projections showing them picking up only 8% of the vote. In 2009 they received almost 11%.
With climate change losing importance in Germany as an issue and the Energiewende (transition to renewable energy) turning into a chaos that threatens the country’s economic stability, the Greens, who were polling near 16% earlier in the year, have since lost almost half of their voter base.
In a reaction to the preliminary results, Green Party co-leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt said on ARD television that they “failed to convince voters of an ecological transition and sustainability“.
The element of fear, which the Greens have always effectively used in the past to motivate its voter base, was absent during the campaign as the issues of nuclear power and climate change didn’t play a role.
Read More: http://www.spiegel.de/merkel-wins general-election-exit-pollshtml
http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20130922-52031.html
Just watched a bit of live state TV. FDP who got kicked out frantically trying to not mention that they lost their voters to AfD. Well all bloc party representants tried frantically to avoid naming the party that can’t be named.
It’s all a sham, Linke, Greens, SPD, FDP and CDU are the same.
The way to forge an election in Germany is BTW to sort out this or that ballot as invalid. I would not be surprised if this election sees more invalid ballots than any other in history. The AfD must be kept under 5% at all costs.
After counting, the ballots get burned to not leave a trace.
I noticed the media keep bringing up a CDU/Green coalition government…that’s their dream. Looks like a grand coalition in the works.
In the ongoing projections all parties go up and down a few tenths of a percent, only AfD stays fixed at 4.9%.
Two possibilities, one is they will rig the results to their desired value; second is, their models don’t know what to do with AfD so they just fixed it in the projections.
(It’s models until they have all the counts)
I’m not entirely sure whether Germany is already corrupted enough for the first alternative.
4.9 is just too convenient for the bloc parties.
Even if they don’t reach the 5% threshold, the party isn’t going to go away.
No but it’ll be powerless because it will have no seats in the Bundestag.
They didn’t have seats before the election either, and still managed to upset the entire election result.
Some spectators are confused/puzzled by the 5% threshold; least of all by the fact that the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Germany’s Federal High Court) held such as being unconstitutional almost 2 years ago, on the basis of obstructing equal opportunity for smaller parties.
If the high court found that the threshold unfairly disadvantaged the people who voted for the minor parties in EU elections, then why does that not apply to what is actually supposed to be a representative parliament in Germany?
Not that it’s easy to build an electoral system that is representative. In Australia, it seems one can get a seat in the upper house with a primary vore of less than 2000, thanks to a system of preferences that can be “gamed” by minor parties. Voters number the candidates in order of preference, directly or by delegating the order by nominating a particular party. In Western Australia, there were 62 candidates for the Senate with 6 senators to be elected. Preferences are distributed until candidates are elected by reaching a “quota”. The Greens candidate got into the Senate (in part) by collecting 56th preference from some voters. Over 3000 voters who really, really didn’t want the candidate to become a senator, voted him into office.
Bernd, if the hemp party doesn’t get enough votes for their candidate, do all of the votes then go to the Sports party?
To whichever party has the next preferences.
If the voter chose to vote according to the “ticket” which fills in all the boxes for the voter as that party wishes, then the distribution to Sports is plausible.
The trickling-through of votes is detailed at the web site of the national broadcaster.
Lucky for us in Western Australia, it looks like both Sports and Greens have been bumped out as the count proceeds. Still almost 10% of the Senate votes to be counted. There’s no hurry because Senators elected in these elections don’t take their seats until July next year.
I like that system, and the weird parties. Has a byzantine madness to it.
This doesn’t seem to be good news. Both options (FDP and AfD) for Merkel to form a centre-right wing cabinet are impossible. Both parties are, at the moment, under the 5% threshold. Leaving the SDP as a coalition partner.
That is bad for the German and Northern European economies because it’ll probably mean that more money will go south.
As for the environment. If I recall correctly then the SPD (as most socialists) are AGW supporters.
“That is bad for the German and Northern European economies because it’ll probably mean that more money will go south.”
Merkel and Schaeuble didn’t tell ya but that was inevitable with the pro Euro parties anyway.
I fully expect it to blow up currency reform style.
In the recent australian elections the Green vote dropped to around 8%.
That seems to be their sustainable level.
They’ve captured the gullible vote.
Shame about AfD. They seemed to be the breath of fresh air German politics needed.
Hopefully, the German High Court will protect savings and investments. Surely, the average German will not allow their hard earned “Deutchmarks” to be poured into the black hole of Greece, Portugal etc.
Good news re. Greens but I’m unfamiliar with Linke – a summary from Dirk perhaps.
After the fall of the DDR, their communist party SED renamed itself to PDS; later the PDS united with some smaller communist groups in the West to form Die Linke. They don’t openly call themselves communists; even though their half-Persian figurehead Sarah Wagenknecht used to candidly admit to be a Stalinist in the past. They are slick talkers and use the ages old trick of promising loot from the rich.
“Hopefully, the German High Court will protect savings and investments.”
The Lisbon treaty subjugates decisions of national high courts under the European high court; and national constitutions under European right; especially the Lisbon treaty. Which was intended to be called the European constitution.
European law defined in July 2013 that depositors now count as creditors to the Bank. So, in a banking collapse, the old order of wipeout was first stockholders, then bondholders, last depositors; now it is first stockholders, then bondholders AND depositors.
European banks have become hot potatoes. I got a stack of Euro notes at home; too dangerous to keep in the bank.
Stocks held in a bank depot also count as credit to the bank. So owning stock and holding it in a bank is becoming dangerous as well; counterparty risk. German law will have to implement this European law.
No information about this leaks out in our state media. This is all the new bail-in regime first tested in Cyprus and now rolled out all over the EU.
I will have to get me a Canadian bank or something.
Sorry guys, but it doesn’t really matter who wins. There can be only one winner – the lobbying!
From any other countries perspective, all German parties must be totally undiscernable from the Greens.
I think any combination can’t be worse than what we already have.
Altmaier, Minister of Environment, for instance, did not do anything about the agitation against journalists from his office, which even the far green-left Taz newspaper compared with 3rd Reich practise.
He, a former EU bureaucrat, told publicly, it was his duty to protect his subordinates in the first place (and not the journalists or the interest of the public).
We certainly remain what we are, 70% of legislation coming from EU commissioners we did not elect or even know, 15% originating from the PIK whisperers and the remaining 15% from political correctness.
I agree. I dont know much about German politics, but when you even have Merkel shutting down all nuclear reactors, it looks as if the choice for voters in Germany, apart from some minor parties, is just a choice between one green party and another. Does the loss of votes for the “The Greens” really mean anything when the mainstream parties are just as green as the Greens?
And the most of them want to participate in the Energiewende. Don’t you see that?
To stay on ‘Greenery’: Old news for you: The AGW fraud has nothing whatever to do with ‘science’. Why is nobody listening to the IPCC itself? To leave no doubt, in an interview published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 14 November 2010, Otto Edenhofer, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III, said “The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War…. one must say clearly that de facto we redistribute the world’s wealth by climate policy…. One has to rid oneself of the illusion that international climate politics have anything to do with environmental concerns.”
Worth repeating what I wrote elsewhere before:
“May 5, 2012 at 6:39 pm
I am getting bored. The globe can be getting warmer or colder, but the idea that the human contribution from burning carbon fuels has anything to do with it is not only IMHO the biggest political and intellectual fraud ever – but so says the IPCC itself: http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.com/2011/10/west-is-facing-new-severe-recession.html. The ongoing discussion pro and con is becoming akin to the scholastic argument as to how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. Which is, of course, exactly what is intended to achieve worldwide disorientation away from the actual IPCC aims of monetary and energy policies – and bringing a whole, if not all, of science into disrepute.”
..don’t worry AfD will probably cross the %5 barrier.
Great to see a green party get comprehensively smashed. Its a pity that nearly all parties are trying to out-green one another
So Pierre 71% of the votes counted and the AFD is going nowhere. You were right
[…] Germany’s Green Party Takes A Beating In National Elections – Climate, Fear No Longer Important … […]
Turkish faction of the Greens (Claudia “Fathima” Roth , Özdemür) against old c0mmie Trittin against christian Katrin Göring-Eckardt – who has the crazy suggestion of becoming a “liberty- and civil rights” party. Yeah that’ll work with the old commies, Katrin!
Fun only just beginning. Expect party purge soon.
http://www.welt.de/politik/wahl/bundestagswahl/article120324514/Das-gruene-Personal-belauert-sich-gegenseitig.html
And the paedophilia scandals in the Green Party ?
That also hurt them in the final days of the campaign.
See this analysis by Bettina Röhl in the Wirtschaftswoche:
http://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl-2013-deutschland-am-roten-abgrund/8837008.html
It’s entirely possible that we may still get a red/red/green front with Herr Steinbrück as chancellor, communist informer Gregor Gysi as vice chancellor (and foreign minister), and Trittin as financial minister. Such a coalition would be holding 316 seats in the Bundestag against Frau Merkel’s 311.
The Linke communist party is an old wing that splintered off from the SPD to begin with. But Steinbrück won’t make a coalition with them – not today. But wait a couple of years!