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German anti-migrant party projected to be 2nd, 21% of the vote in regional election
- Thread starter 2MF
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There's no way they will come into any power for many years. There's no other party that would form a coalition with them and they're only slightly above 10% in nationwide polls.
Oh, absolutely. Hysteria everywhere you go. Not adressing it, bad idea.
Merkel is a good bureaucrat, but she lacks in the empathy department and comes across like she's been living in a bubble for the last 4 years. The whole migration crisis is nothing but a huuuge drop into an already full bucket. Bank crisis, debt crisis, migration crisis - people are fed up with the establishment and will vote the biggest assholes in an act of desperation. US will, too. no matter who wins ;P
Maybe history will remember Merkel as the one truely uniting Europe....
under the right banner
Again, these are mostly the remains of the era under Bernd Lucke. Most of the party's economic liberalism left with him. Petry, for instance, certainly is not what one would call "FDP on drugs". The AfD is not running on economic liberalism anymore, and it's only a matter of time till the official program will reflect that, especially after the recent successes.
You Are Viewtiful
Member
I don't think Brexit voters are renowned for their foresight.
mercenar1e
Member
saw this coming from a mile away.
AfD is FDP in that regard, just much more extreme. They don't even pretend to have a social conscience like FDP does.
But hence, noone cares.
Congratulations
Frankfurter
Member
She failed at it, because there was no way she could have done adjustments unless she gave in to right-wing demands.
After all is said and done, this may be seen as her biggest political mistake, but for once she stood up for what she believed in. I'm not exactly a Merkel supporter, but the handling of the refugee crisis and her way of standing up against racism and the right has been pretty amazing. Unfortunately most of Europe has failed her.
Christopher
Member
What exactly was her way...? There seems no plan no intervention strategy...no long term plans just let them in!
The people have spoken - it doesn't make them xenophobic. On the other hand Germany was more than open to having refugees - it's the no direction, no Strategy leadership that has gotten her here.
Sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling xenophobic or racist isn't flying - I think the people of Germany want change and action other than what Merkel is offering
Does anyone have any information on the demographics of AfD supporters? Google failed me.
Am curious where they fit in the rest of the European radical right. The best predictor of UKIP support is the 'UKIP double' which is 1) Strong eurosceptic and either feeling a) pessimistic about the future or b) unrepresented in politics. Typically that applies to old, white, male, working class voters. Wondering if there is something similar for AfD supporters.
Am curious where they fit in the rest of the European radical right. The best predictor of UKIP support is the 'UKIP double' which is 1) Strong eurosceptic and either feeling a) pessimistic about the future or b) unrepresented in politics. Typically that applies to old, white, male, working class voters. Wondering if there is something similar for AfD supporters.
Doubt it. In Austria the right-wing FPÖ is 1st if only people under 30 voted. This "old nazi" stereotype is wrong. The one thing that's consistent is that women vote rather left, men rather right.
What are you talking about? The loudest call for a migration limit came from her political union partner CSU and I find it pretty telling how fast people forget about recent events.
When the discussion about the migration limit was swiped away by Merkel without any argument instead repeating the same parole over and over again, the other countries along the Balkan route solved the issue their way. If you ask me, this was an act of telling Merkel "we don't want a united Europe with you running our inner affairs".
I still believe that there were better options right from the start, like funding Lebanon or Greece. Hell, I found out the other day that Portugal would love to take in some refugees, because of the huge brain-drain they're facing these days.
Gabriel is going to be chancellor (lol) before the Afd will have a majority goverment.
Yet ironically almost no "refugees" want to go there.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deuts...rn-woher-die-afd-waehler-kamen-a-1110521.html
The graphics are, in order, voter turnout, voter migration, age, sex, occupation and education.
The only slight trends I can see are former non-voters (this is huge), men and people with less education are more likely to vote AfD. Age is almost negligible. This is only about this one small state election, though.
The argument is Asylum is a human right and it doesn't know a numbers limit.
The plan was to limit the right as much as possible aka safe origin countries and EU sharing the burden.
They are trying with the former. EU failed.
The SPD actually lost even more votes than the cdu when you compare it to the previous election. So while it's a win, they're also bleeding heavily.
Frankfurter
Member
Merkel original strategy was a european solution. The ~1.2 or so million in 2015 could have easily been absorbed by a Europe that actually worked together. That failed. Not because of Merkel, but because only a handful of countries agreed to take in people fleeing a terrible war.
At that point (~Sep 2015 or so) Merkel had the choice to either close the boarders or let the people come in.
And of course there is no long term plan. What kind of long term plan do you think there is for Syria in the US, the UK, Germany or France? Hope and pray, it'll work out somehow. That there was no long term plan to begin with (for wars like in Iraq or Afghanistan, and the Syria war) is one of the reasons we are in this situation.
Regginator
Member
I expect to see a lot of similar results in other European countries as well, primarily due to the refugee crisis and IS attacks. I'm already bracing myself for the PVV (Party of "Freedom") to become one of the biggest parties in the Netherlands.
Actually, the SPD added a couple of thousand votes (246K to 240K in 2011).
Frankfurter
Member
What's your point? I know that the CSU wanted (and probably still wants) a limit. So what?
The thing is: they didn't solve the issue. Those people didn't magically disappear, because boarders are closed. They are still out there.
Merkel did never run any inner affairs of a EU country btw. Why and how would she anyway?
I find your remark to Portugal and the brain-drain pretty interesting. The usual argument is that most of those refugees will never be productive in these western societies, because the lack the relevant skills, religion etc. And now you propose that Portugal could solve it's brain-drain problem somehow?
Btw. I'm sure Merkel was open to other options, but I doubt Poland or Hungary etc. where open to a debate about funding refugee camps in Lebanon.
Exactly my way of thinking. Dry and rational. You leave that door open forever and the whole 3rd world will follow your invitation. There are people who clearly don't want that and vote right-wing. It already happened, so we're talking facts here and sitting in front of a PC, in a nice flat and having a good job calling others stupid, xenophobic or assholes will not help a bit.
Merkel for whatever reason has avoided a rational and open discussion about how many people Germany can take in and I don't think that people not agreeing with her stance can all be associated with concentration camps, racial selection and fascist world supremacy.
Opinion shaming for me is the worst thing in this day and age. "You dont agree with me, oh then you're a ......ist."
Every single modern nation is going to go through a population demographic crisis soon, thanks to lower birth rates and higher life expectancy rates. This will mean that there won't be enough on the younger demographics to support the older demographics. The first nation to hit this was Japan which has caused their economy to stall for more then a decade. Here is what a nation like Canada's population is going to look like (one that is already decently open to immigration):
The nations that figure out how to intelligently manage immigration will be able to alleviate some of the pain from the population demographic crisis.
Being against immigration is understandable as the on boarding of new immigrants is a heavy burden to society both economically but culturally, but it's so short sighted. Once you can weather that burden, you reap a lot of benefits from immigration.
The nations that figure out how to intelligently manage immigration will be able to alleviate some of the pain from the population demographic crisis.
Being against immigration is understandable as the on boarding of new immigrants is a heavy burden to society both economically but culturally, but it's so short sighted. Once you can weather that burden, you reap a lot of benefits from immigration.
TylerDurden4321
Member
What's also wrong in the OP is that they weren't beaten on "home turf", the winning left-center party lost even more percent than the CDU. The majority of the AFD anti-migrant voters were non-voters in the last voting period, which makes the CDU "loss" of their previous pro-voters even lower than the diagrams indicate.
Especially we germans should have learned from history and not vote right wing populists. Rather eat it up than vote like that, really.
Especially we germans should have learned from history and not vote right wing populists. Rather eat it up than vote like that, really.
"I'm not a nazi/racist, but..." is one of my favorite ways to start a sentence.
oh my bad. Apparently did the turnout jump from 51,5% to 61,1%
Thanks for the information, that's really interesting. Seems like age really isn't a significant factor.
Still, if these parties are anything like UKIP then it's important not to think the reason people are voting for them is just about their superficial "single issue" (Immigration or the EU for example). Rather the single issue gets them in the door but they continue to appeal because they are representing a world view which none of the other parties are capable of doing. Pessimistic, alienated from the political process (hence appealing to non-voters) and generally distrustful of an "open society". Now that they're here I'm not sure they're just going away even if the refugee crisis stops.
Frankfurter
Member
If you'd like to have a proper discussion... fine. But that's just bullshit. Google asylum and when and how it can be granted.
Please Google how asylum and when and how it can be granted didn't stop many thousands from trying nevertheless. The whole migration crisis would have been a much smaller issue if people from Marocco, Tunesia, Algeria, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, Pakistan... didn't join in.
http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2016-01/fluechtlinge-aus-nordafrika-marokko-tunesien-algerien-sichere-herkunftstaaten
So this is like a State/Provincial election, correct?
Why does the article in the OP state, "The poll - the first of five regional votes due to take place before the national electon next September - is largely symbolic, and "will not have a direct impact on the workings of the German government", says The Guardian." ???
And the article says that AfD was in second, but they won less than half the seats of the CDU. Is the vote or the seat count important -and what does it mean?
German GAF explain your political system to me plz.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
How much of a swing is this compared to other creations or dissolutions of previous parties? In a system without compulsory voting, varied turnout, and varied party count it is very difficult to compare results across elections. Your graph suggests that a new party was created and every existing party went down as a result, but it's not clear to me how much of this is driven by turnout and how much by vote switching? If the new party captures a bunch of previous non-voters that's something that's of political interest but very different than if the new party bleeds out the old parties--and the lesson people should learn from each situation is different.
(I'm in the middle of a paper that involves comparing electoral results when the number of candidates changes and it causes a real analysis problem, I'm being sincere here not trolling)
So this is like a State/Provincial election, correct?
Why does the article in the OP state, "The poll - the first of five regional votes due to take place before the national electon next September - is largely symbolic, and "will not have a direct impact on the workings of the German government", says The Guardian." ???
And the article says that AfD was in second, but they won less than half the seats of the CDU. Is the vote or the seat count important -and what does it mean?
German GAF explain your political system to me plz.
It's complicated. The short version is that every voter actually has two votes. With the first vote, you vote directly for a candidate in your district. With your second vote you vote for a party. Roughly half of the seats in the parliament go to the candidates that got the most votes in their districts. (Your chart only shows those.) The remaining seats are assigned to candidates from the participating parties based on the relative majorities from those secondary votes, but only if the party managed to get more than 5% of those votes. The details are more complicated, but that's the general idea.
WorriedCitizen
Member
Turnout went up from about 51% to 61%. They got 55k of their votes from former non voters and 98k from other parties (pretty evenly between 15-20k each).
So this is like a State/Provincial election, correct?
Why does the article in the OP state, "The poll - the first of five regional votes due to take place before the national electon next September - is largely symbolic, and "will not have a direct impact on the workings of the German government", says The Guardian." ???
And the article says that AfD was in second, but they won less than half the seats of the CDU. Is the vote or the seat count important -and what does it mean?
German GAF explain your political system to me plz.
Unlike in the US, states in Germany have little autonomy politically, their tasks primarily come down to education, security and infrastructure. They do have a say in nationwide politics through the 'Bundesrat', a sort of senate, but only the governing party/coalition of each state is represented (which, in this case, looks like a SPD and CDU coalition).
What ElTorro said. All taken together, the distribution of seats in the new MV parliament is as follows:
Linke: 11
SPD: 26
CDU: 16
AfD: 18
Largest AfD gain, 56K, comes from voters who didn't participate in the last election but they also drew some blood from other parties across the political spectrum, from the very far-right (NPD) to the far-left (Die Linke).
OrangeGrayBlue
Member
The state with the most Trump supporters per capita is 93% white and has almost no illegal immigrant population. They're addressed by right wing politicians as scapegoats and bogeymen because it allows for simple solutions to complex problems. "Kick out people that are x, y and z and things will get better" is an easier sell than economic theory.
You are not wrong. Not addressing these things leads to backlash.
YourMaster
Member
This is nonsense of course. And people see through this idiocy.
Yes, European countries are failing at getting a healthy birth rate (they are hardly trying mind you, but still), but this is unrelated to the people in the middle east committing genocide, torture, rape, slavery and many other horrors.
These are serious, but separate problems.
If you need migration - and I think in Germany there's no way around that - you should carefully plan this: When, how many, where to, where from and especially who. You can gain a lot from this, if your answer is not 'All this year, hundreds of thousands, mostly men in a small age range, only those with a radically different culture'.
Likewise, if you don't want to see millions of people suffer, well, basically do the opposite of what the EU policy is today. Which is imprisoning many people on Greek islands while leaving many more to suffer in the war zone and dumping the rest somewhere in between your local population.
AfD isn't anti-immigration, they were founded as an Anti-EU party and then taken over by neo-nazis.
They are an extreme right party that wants to go back to traditional gender roles, ban Muslims/Islam, exit the Euro, reduce wind energy and reinstate the draft. Oh and can't forget the Antisemitism, with some of the elected representatives even denying the Holocaust.
They are racist scum.
They are an extreme right party that wants to go back to traditional gender roles, ban Muslims/Islam, exit the Euro, reduce wind energy and reinstate the draft. Oh and can't forget the Antisemitism, with some of the elected representatives even denying the Holocaust.
They are racist scum.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Largest AfD gain, 56K, comes from voters who didn't participate in the last election but they also drew some blood from other parties across the political spectrum, from the very far-right (NPD) to the far-left (Die Linke).
Thank you both. So there's kinda a mixed lesson here
- The original article suggests that this area is "home turf" for CDU. That seems plainly false, as even in the absence of AfD, CDU would not win the election.
- Around half of AfD's support is coming from outside the normal political spectrum. Mainstream parties can try to contest for these voters or try to consolidate victory by contesting a greater share of the existing voters. AfD is both taking a slice of the pie, and growing the pie.
- CDU is smaller than SPD in the area but more votes were siphoned from CDU than SPD, so this is more a phenomenon afflicting the centre-right than the centre-left, although both are afflicted.
- Like most populist movements, AfD is "broad" rather than "deep" in support and most electoral success is coming from proportionality rules rather than riding-level results.
A bit of a mess. I still think the broader move towards right-populism and skepticism of immigration in Europe is notable, although I think maybe the results of this specific regional election are a little less clear of a message than the original article makes it sound.
The Economist had an article about this a while back and they noted that Mecklenberg has barely any refugees or foreigners and is a rather rural character.
It is interesting that the most anti-immigrant areas are the ones who are least impacted by it. You see this in Britain, America, and now Germany. I imagine it is basically true everywhere and it is something that is part of human psychology.
It is interesting that the most anti-immigrant areas are the ones who are least impacted by it. You see this in Britain, America, and now Germany. I imagine it is basically true everywhere and it is something that is part of human psychology.
It's referring to Merkel's home turf, not CDU's.
Edit: If you look at other articles on this subject, a lot of them mention it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37274222
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...887274-87b7-443d-a2ee-fc9d8965a63b_story.html
It has been like this in Germany for a while, the far right NPD only managed to join regional parliaments in the eastern states of Germany which have very low immigrant percentages
ClosingADoor
Member
When traditional parties don't have any answers to the issues that people have, they will after a while flock to more populist parties. This immigration issue has been going on for years before the refugee crisis and now that just added more fuel. And even after a year of seeing the far right rise, I have yet to hear anything from other parties about how to deal with this fear from people and some of the real issues that are going on. None are taking a leadership role and that leaves room for parties like this to rise.
It's so unnecessary and stupid, yet here we are. Next elections are going to be interesting. Certainly in my home country of Holland here next year...
It's so unnecessary and stupid, yet here we are. Next elections are going to be interesting. Certainly in my home country of Holland here next year...
Looking at prior data (Landtag = state, Bundestag = nationwide), funnily enough, the CDU has won Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the federal and EU parliament elections quite handily the last couple of times but lost out to the SPD in state elections consistently. But as 2MF said, Merkel's home turf likely refers to her home district being in the northern part of MV where she's been, and will likely again be, up for election in the federal elections.
Voters are indeed a fickle bunch. The Greens entered the MV parliament in 2011 on the heels of Fukushima with almost 9%, yet this year they failed to even reach the 5% threshold and thus will drop out of the parliament again.
We'll see if the AfD will suffer a similar fate. It was said in one of the exit polls that just 24% of AfD voters voted for them out of conviction, while the remaining 76% did so out of protest, presumably against Merkel's refugee policy. If that's going to be less of the hot button issue in 2021 than it was this year, it stands to reason the AfD will likely lose at least some support in MV, unless they can expand their voter base.
WorriedCitizen
Member
As with Brexit this is more nuanced then just the issue of immigration even tho that's what public discourse ends up centering around. There are other things boiling under the surface which slowly but steadily get amplified by this whole kerfuffle.
It gets more noticed by people in the eastern states of Germany who have a greater historic sensibility and first hand experience living in a dictatorship full of surveillance and state propaganda.
For many it is like a deja vu to have the state and the media lecturing them on what's right and moral, having to fear a state spying on them, losing job and social status over having a dissenting opinion, the feeling of being controlled by an outside entity in many aspects of life (back then Moscow, now Brussels), politicians making important decissions for them over their heads without even asking etc. Whether this perception was right or wrong from the beginning doesn't even matter anymore. As i wrote in one of my earlier comments it becomes all a bit of a self-fullfilling phrophecy because the reaction to this by politicians and the media so far is more propaganda, vilification and ideas how to control people.
It gets more noticed by people in the eastern states of Germany who have a greater historic sensibility and first hand experience living in a dictatorship full of surveillance and state propaganda.
For many it is like a deja vu to have the state and the media lecturing them on what's right and moral, having to fear a state spying on them, losing job and social status over having a dissenting opinion, the feeling of being controlled by an outside entity in many aspects of life (back then Moscow, now Brussels), politicians making important decissions for them over their heads without even asking etc. Whether this perception was right or wrong from the beginning doesn't even matter anymore. As i wrote in one of my earlier comments it becomes all a bit of a self-fullfilling phrophecy because the reaction to this by politicians and the media so far is more propaganda, vilification and ideas how to control people.
Hypnotoad
Member
To those saying that a European distribution would help... well, it would not. The quota deal from last year, encompassing 160.000 refugees (as in: already recognized as legitime) in Greece and Italy is already falling apart because a sizable proportion doesn't want to be resettled into East Europe or countries with low welfare.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/826f1bf2-1b75-11e6-b286-cddde55ca122.html
However, just one quarter of recent arrival in Greece are refugees. Three quarters are likely to be economic migrants (and they will want to continue on to Germany).
http://greece.greekreporter.com/201...ylum-seekers-in-greece-are-economic-migrants/
Btw. the migrant influx is still ongoing. Now the Scandinavian countries sending back asylum claimants to Germany under Dublin processing, and then are those denied asylum from other countries who try their luck again in Germany.
Crime has risen quite dramatically. In Hamburg, one of the preferred destinations for migrants, around three percent of the population are refugee claimants, yet among criminal suspects, they stood more than ten percent in March, and the numbers have been even higher since.
http://www.mopo.de/hamburg/polizei/...hnte-tatverdaechtige-ist-fluechtling-23913610
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/826f1bf2-1b75-11e6-b286-cddde55ca122.html
However, just one quarter of recent arrival in Greece are refugees. Three quarters are likely to be economic migrants (and they will want to continue on to Germany).
http://greece.greekreporter.com/201...ylum-seekers-in-greece-are-economic-migrants/
Btw. the migrant influx is still ongoing. Now the Scandinavian countries sending back asylum claimants to Germany under Dublin processing, and then are those denied asylum from other countries who try their luck again in Germany.
Crime has risen quite dramatically. In Hamburg, one of the preferred destinations for migrants, around three percent of the population are refugee claimants, yet among criminal suspects, they stood more than ten percent in March, and the numbers have been even higher since.
http://www.mopo.de/hamburg/polizei/...hnte-tatverdaechtige-ist-fluechtling-23913610
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
But there is no special reason to believe that a leader's party will be successful in their home state/province in any country at any time. The comment is brought up as if it is especially harsh that her party is losing here, but there is no reason to believe they would win even in the absence of concern about immigration. If the party had historically won here, and it was not merely ground zero for Merkel but also for the party (e.g. David Cameron was not just an MP in Oxfordshire, it's a broadly Tory area to begin with) there there might be some significance to them losing this time. All this says is that Merkel's own district and her party's center of power are not the same.
This 100x. "EU failed" my ass. Nobody wants to go to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Baltics, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia. Even France and Portugal offered extra places and couldn't fill them.
And aside from that Germany doesn't get to decide what happens in all of europe alone.
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