Germany's parliamentary elections are coming up on September 26th, 2021

Wutt?

 

So, four hours after the polls closed, it's no longer CDU/CSU 25-25:



SPD is now ahead by +1.5%, which translates to the following seats in parliament, if these figures hold:



A "wahlkreis" is much larger than a precinct but smaller than a state. In Germany, there are 299 such Wahlkreise. All of them have reported some data by now, but only 18 of 299 have reported in 100% data, and the bulk of those Wahlkreise are out of Bavaria, which is a CDU/CSU stronghold.



The more and more all the data comes in, it looks like SPD will have a good +3 to +4% lead over the Union (CDU/CSU).

About 2 hours after the polls closed, the channel ARD (channel 1 in German TV) always holds what is called "die Elephantenrunde" (The elephant-inning), meaning that the big wig pols all appear across from each other on TV and talk about the results of the election. Usually by now, the election would be decided, but it is going to be a couple of days before we will know for sure how this is going to work out. The one big new thing that came out of that 2 hour interview session is that no one is really thinking anymore that there are 2 large national parties (CDU/CSU, SPD) and some smaller, Junior partner parties, but rather, 4 middle sized parties (SPD, CDU/CSU, the Greens and FDP) that are democracy friendly, and two parties (AfD, Die Linke) that are enemies of Democracy and would dismantle democracy and move toward dictatorship were they to come to power.

Usually, in the Elephantenrunde, the big party that is winning would signal that it would start coalition talks with it's preferred junior partner, but this time around, the Greens and the FDP have decided they will start talks with each other, because neither of the formally large national parties can build a coalition without BOTH of these parties in the coalition mix. The parties have colors associated with them and the special 3-party coalitions also have nicknames. These coalitions have never been tested in real life, so this is new territory in German politics.

The two possible three-way coalitions:

The "Jamaica"-Coalition: Black (CDU) / Yellow (FDP) / Green (the Greens), because those are the colors of the Jamaican flag

The "Ampel" ("Streetlight")-Coalition: Red (SPD) / Yellow (SPD) / Green (the Greens), because, well, you know why.

It's getting pretty late here now, so I will likely add more information about this tomorrow.

-Stat

 

Wutt, wutt?

 

Update, 2021-09-027

Sooo, on the day after the German Parliamentary elections, it looks like this:



As leading party, the SPD (Social Democrats) have an narrow edge of +1.6% over CDU/CSU Union (Christian Democrats). Neither of the parties which were once the huge national parties is anywhere near close being able to claim the reins of government without a 3-way coalition.

Here is how the parties did in relation to four years ago:



On %, the CDU lost -8.9% over 2017, while the SPD gained +5.2% The rest you can see for yourself. The party that gained the most in baseline percentage over 2017 was: the Greens. The hard left party (Die Linke) has fallen under 5% and if this trend continues, then they will lose all party-list seats in the Bundestag and probably only have three seats that are direct mandate seat. That will have a huge impact over the next graphic, which does not show this yet:



Right now, the SPD has 206 out of 735 seats (it was first projected that it would be 730 last night, has grown since then), or 28.03% of the parliament.

The CDU/CDU combined (called the "Union") has 196 out of 735 seats, or 26.7%.

So, the overall +1.7% margin for the SPD in the German national popular vote is less in the Bundestag, where it is more like +1.3%. This is because the Union won more direct mandate seats than the SPD.

Third in line are the Greens, with 118 out of 735 seats, or 16.1%. Combined, the SPD and the Greens, without a third partner, have 324 seats, under the necessary 368 to have absolute majority in the parliament.

Fourth in line is the FDP (Free Democrats), which is most capitalistic party in Germany. Their 92 seats represent 12.5% of the parliament.

The Union and FDP together have 288 seats, absolutely not enough to get to the 366 threshhold with a third partner.

No one wants to deal with washed up nazis, so the AfD doesn't come into consideration for any coalition. Fuggedaboudit.

Last night, until about midnight, Die Linke (the hard left, old communist party) was at 5% but is now at 4.9%, under the 5% hurdle. Most of their 39 seats are likely to disappear if they do not get to 5% by the time the results are final and certified, and this would give SPD and the Greens an outside chance to get close to the 368 hurdle, but even with all 39 leftie seats, they would still not get there.

So, we are in the same situation as we were last night: the somewhat smaller of the four now middle-sized parties are going to play kingmaker and I can already predict a couple of things:

-being the third strongest party in the election, this means that the Greens will be the 2nd strongest party in any coalition pact they sign. Traditionally, in Geman politics, the leading candidate (Spitzenkandidat) from the "Junior Partner" in a coalition-pact becomes the Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister (both jobs are rolled up into one cabinet post), and that person is going to be Annalena Bierbock (Grüne/Bündnis '90). This will not be the 2nd time that a Green had this post. The last time was with Joschka Fischer in 1998 to 2005.

-The other kingmaker is the FDP, with Christian Lindner as their leading candidate.Whatever happens, we now now for sure, even if the Linkies lose all of their seats in the Bundestag, that neither of the former big parties can make a coalition without both the Greens and the FDP in the mix, so it has to be a coalition that both can swallow. Annalena Bierbock signalled last night in the Elephant-interview that she is open to either option, of SPD/Greens/FDP or Union/Greens/FDP. However, Christian Lindner say "through the roses" last night that he is not willing to go with a coalition that would drift the Republic farther to the left, and so I am thinking that his fraction would not be willing to sign a coalitions-pact with SPD and the Greens but would only sign a pact with the Union and the Greens. This means that just as in the USA, it is possible that the party that received less popular votes can still win the chancellorship.

Olaf Shulz (SPD), since he won the most votes, will get the first crack at building a coalition. He can try to press forward with a minority-coaltion, this would 100% be blocked by the Union and would go nowhere, but he could try it.

If Schulz (SPD) cannot build a coaltion, then the 2nd highest vote-getter, Armin Laschet (Union) would get his chance to build a coalition.

The third thing that could happen but is very unlikely to happen would be were the Greens to say "no thank you, we will gladly go into the opposition this time around" and not be a part of any coalition, which would mathematically mean that the only remaining possibility would be the Grand Coalition, which is what Germany has had for the last 8 years, under CDU leadership, but would this time be under SPD leadership. Most people don't know that Olaf Schulz has been Angela Merkel's Vice-Chancellor the last four years, since his party was the Junior Party in the coalition.

So, drink tea, relax and wait.

Germany will indeed have a ruling coalition, it's just going to take some time to figure out which one it will be.

And just for fun, this is what the "electoral map" of Germany from yesterday's election looks like:



We can see that there is a real geographical divide here: in Southern Germany, most notably Bavaria and about half of the western party of Germany, the Union is the strongest party. In most of the old East Germany plus the other half of West Germany, the SPD is the upper-party. In the poorer regions of SE Germany, the old nazis from that crappy FPD won some Wahlkreisen (kind of like counties). And although the Greens were the 3rd strongest party (whereas the AfD was the 5th strongest), they only outright won in one single Wahlkreis. This kind of geograhical divide kind of reminds me of the Dixiecrat South of 1948 or Wallace's American Independent South of 1968: geographically, a certain amount of land, but in terms of actually votes, a small minority.

-Stat

 

What the world does not need is another "crazy" running that country. Amazing the timeline when history is factored in.

 

Coalition talks are now under way.

 

In Berlin there were too many elections at the same time - so there was chaos with long waiting lines ....

 

Coalition talks are going on and on.
Maybe around Christmas Germany will have a new Chancellor.