German Politics (was Germany: Elections 2017)

[pocketscience]

Because it wouldn't even come within hailing distance of the 316 seats needed for a majority.

Neither would a CDU & FDP coalition. Surely they wouldn't consider going into a partnership with the AfD?

 

[hot air baboon]

AfD deploys double-headed eagle to snare Russian-German voters

Former Soviet migrants increasingly see populist party as their political home

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The AfD and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc are engaged in a fierce fight for the support of former Soviet immigrants in the September 24 poll. Such a contest is unprecedented: the Russian-Germans were once considered the Christian Democrats’ most loyal constituency.


...will be interesting to see if the CSU vote holds up despite Bavaria being on the front line during the refugee crisis....

 

[Idris2002]

Neither would a CDU & FDP coalition. Surely they wouldn't consider going into a partnership with the AfD?

CDU + FDP + Greens = 349. More than enough.

As for going into partnership with the AfD, that's for the next election. Ha ha.

 

[pocketscience]

CDU + FDP + Greens = 349. More than enough.

As for going into partnership with the AfD, that's for the next election. Ha ha.

Wasnt their last alliance in a coalition with the CDU a disaster for the Greens? i recall Tritin saying the party would never do that again.

Is there no way the Greens could make a last minute decision to go with the SPD & Linke?
If they did, the CDU would be fucked as there's no way the FDP would be going in with the AfD.

 

[pocketscience]

Ok scrap that. There's been an update on the seats count and a CDU/FDP coalition would have more seats than GRN/SPD/Linke

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Catching up with this. Does anyone know why the SPD has ruled out another coalition? Is it because they think it's destroying them?

 

[goldenecitrone]

They don't want to let afd become the official opposition.

 

[pocketscience]

Catching up with this. Does anyone know why the SPD has ruled out another coalition? Is it because they think it's destroying them?

Yes.

 

[pocketscience]

AfD has 22.8% in the East

 

[The39thStep]

C

AfD has 22.8% in the East

Combination of concerns about immigration and anti Merkle sentiment in what is the poorer part of Germany

 

[Idris2002]

AfD has 22.8% in the East

And a majority of east German men, apparently.


A Facebook contact of mine is reporting people in tears on the tram.

 

[Pickman's model]

AfD deploys double-headed eagle to snare Russian-German voters

Former Soviet migrants increasingly see populist party as their political home

Subscribe to read

The AfD and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc are engaged in a fierce fight for the support of former Soviet immigrants in the September 24 poll. Such a contest is unprecedented: the Russian-Germans were once considered the Christian Democrats’ most loyal constituency.


...will be interesting to see if the CSU vote holds up despite Bavaria being on the front line during the refugee crisis....

Subscribe to read link - what's it say?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I see that the social fascists only got 20%.

 

[Idris2002]

I see that the social fascists only got 20%.

"Nach Hitler, uns."

 

[yield]

AfD deploys double-headed eagle to snare Russian-German voters

Former Soviet migrants increasingly see populist party as their political home

Subscribe to read

The AfD and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc are engaged in a fierce fight for the support of former Soviet immigrants in the September 24 poll. Such a contest is unprecedented: the Russian-Germans were once considered the Christian Democrats’ most loyal constituency.


...will be interesting to see if the CSU vote holds up despite Bavaria being on the front line during the refugee crisis....

Subscribe to read link - what's it say?

AfD deploys double-headed eagle to snare Russian-German voters
Former Soviet migrants increasingly see populist party as their political home

For André Poggenburg of the populist Alternative for Germany party, the “alleged” Russian annexation of Crimea was a “fiction”. The peninsula’s inhabitants actually seceded from Ukraine after a democratic referendum.

That was the version of events Mr Poggenburg, an AfD leader in eastern Germany, presented at the party’s recent “Russia Congress” in the north-eastern city of Magdeburg. Advertised with images of the Russian double-headed eagle and with German translations of Vladimir Putin’s speeches on sale, the event was a direct play for the Russian-German vote ahead of Germany’s federal election.

The AfD and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc are engaged in a fierce fight for the support of former Soviet immigrants in the September 24 poll. Such a contest is unprecedented: the Russian-Germans were once considered the Christian Democrats’ most loyal constituency.

But surveys suggest many are switching their allegiance to the AfD, attracted by its pro-Kremlin stance and hard line on Muslim refugees.

“The CDU/CSU has moved so far to the left that they have simply betrayed their values,” says Albert Breininger, a Russian-German running as an AfD candidate. “The CDU abandoned us and the AfD became our new political home.”

The Russian-Germans are descended from German farmers who colonised the lands around the Volga River in the 18th century and were exiled to Siberia and Kazakhstan by Stalin in 1941. Many drifted back to their ethnic homeland after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Numbering some 2.5m, they form one of Germany’s largest immigrant groups but retain strong family and cultural links to Russia.

In the 1990s, some 75 per cent backed the CDU/CSU, according to an interior ministry study — mostly out of gratitude to Helmut Kohl, the then CDU chancellor, who opened Germany’s doors to them at the end of the Cold War.

Yet things have changed since then. “Kohl is dead now and we don’t owe his party anything any more,” says Mr Breininger.

According to the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR), Russian-German support for the conservative bloc now stands at 45 per cent. “[Their] traditional affiliation to the CDU/CSU is clearly fading while a tendency to vote for smaller parties is growing,” it says.

Some 4.7 per cent now back the AfD, according to the SVR. Others think that is an underestimate. Achim Goerres, a political scientist at the University of Duisburg-Essen, says that based on his work with focus groups he expects 15-20 per cent to vote for the populists.
Russian-Germans protest against migrants in 2016 after a girl from their community accused three North African men of rape. The charges were later found to be false © Reuters

Recent voting behaviour could bear him out. In Pforzheim, a town in south-western Germany with a large Russian-German population, the AfD won 24 per cent of the vote in local elections last year, while the CDU’s share plunged from 45 per cent to 22 per cent. The AfD’s best result in the town was in the suburb of Haidach, where nearly half the 8,500 residents have a Soviet family background and more than 50 per cent voted for the party.

Heinrich Zertik, a CDU MP and himself a former Soviet immigrant, acknowledges his party had become complacent. “We didn’t stay in close enough contact with the community, didn’t put a warm hand on their shoulders,” he says.

But it was Ms Merkel’s 2015 decision to throw open Germany’s borders to more than 1m mainly Muslim migrants that proved the clincher for wavering Russian-German voters. “There’s a perception of unfairness,” says Mr Goerres. “Some of them say — they have it so easy and for us it was so difficult, such a lengthy process.”

Generally more conservative, patriotic and religious than most Germans, some in the community have also expressed fears about the effect of the refugee influx on Germany’s cultural identity.

“Russian-Germans have often come from countries with Muslim populations, like Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, they have experienced Islam and they don’t want it here,” says Mr Breininger. “They want to preserve Germany’s western Christian culture.”

Anti-immigrant sentiment among Russian-Germans came to national attention in January 2016 when a 13-year-old girl from a Russian-speaking family in Berlin claimed she had been raped by three North African men.

The police established that her story was fabricated but that did not deter the Russian state media, the main information source for many in Germany’s Russian-speaking community, which turned it into a cause célèbre. Thousands of Russian-Germans took to the streets across Germany to support the girl and vent their anger at the refugee influx.

The case sparked a media frenzy in Germany, triggering unprecedented scrutiny of an immigrant community that had been largely ignored. The Merkel government fretted about their susceptibility to Russian media manipulation and the AfD’s hardline rhetoric.
André Poggenburg, AfD leader in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, has wooed Russian-Germans by suggesting Moscow's annexation of Crimea was a 'fiction' © Alamy

But some say the community has been unfairly stigmatised. “There are many Russian-German volunteers who have assisted refugees, taught them German, helped them navigate the bureaucracy, befriended them,” says Mr Zertik.

The CDU is now scrambling to woo them. Its manifesto promises to improve pensions for ethnic German immigrants, preserve Germany’s “rich cultural heritage”, deport failed asylum seekers more quickly and put 15,000 extra police on the streets.

But the AfD has gone further, fielding seven Russian-German election candidates, translating campaign literature into Russian and adopting Russia-friendly policies such as a pledge to end economic sanctions against Moscow.

Maxim Ryabkov, head of the German Association of Russian-Speaking Parents, says the AfD has made big strides in tapping the Russian-German vote. But, he notes, it has a long way to go to galvanise a group that has traditionally had little interest in politics.

“The problem for the AfD,” he says, “is that a lot of Russian-Germans just don’t vote at all”.

 

[pocketscience]

And a majority of east German men, apparently.


A Facebook contact of mine is reporting people in tears on the tram.

The results have just come in for the constituency where Mrs Pocketscience is from, in Saxony: AfD 31.5 % (CDU won with 32.4%).
We're driving down there next weekend visiting her family and it's the Tag der Einheit (Unity Day). Horror.

 

[redsquirrel]

I vaguely recall that was the reason touted in the 2013 election - the drop in die Linke vote in the east went to the AfD there, and in the west the AfD gained from the FDP drop.
All irrelevant now they've really established themselves with with big numbers of CDU rightwingers. Scary shit.

Can someone explain to me why there's no speculation of a Red, Red, Green coalition?

Wasn't that tried in Berlin or somewhere and didn't work?

Besides of which DL would be fools to climb into bed with scum like the Greens and SPD.

 

[pocketscience]

Wasn't that tried in Berlin or somewhere and didn't work?

Probably. I don't recall the Greens having ever really got on with anyone. Least of all themselves. They seem terminally split between the landed conservatives agriculturalist types and " '68 movement" Kreuzberg hippy clichés.

Besides of which DL would be fools to climb into bed with scum like the Greens and SPD.

Amen that.
The angle I was aiming at was, for the duration of coalition negotiations, to force the CDU/CSU/FDP hand, for them to consider inviting the AfD into thier bed.
The fallout of that would be spectacular.

 

[pocketscience]

They don't want to let afd become the official opposition.

Warning on using WeltN24 = Springer Press (i.e; an upmarket Bild)

 

[Idris2002]

Interesting that there's big thick bloc of AfD support in the west as well.

 

[gawkrodger]

AfD's leader has just resigned at their post-election press conference and announced she will be taking her seat as an independent

 

[Idris2002]

These fucking people.

 

[Thimble Queen]

It's pretty scary tbh. They got a relatively low percentage here in Hamburg but still.

 

[Cornichon]

Yes. 7.3 / 7.8% overall in Hamburg.
This still is way too much!

Will people never learn?

 

[Thimble Queen]

Yes. 7.3 / 7.8% overall in Hamburg.
This still is way too much!

Will people never learn?

Yeah still too much. I suppose I've been consoling myself a little bit with that fact. In my neighbourhood it was a bit less at around 5%. I wonder if there will be an increase in hate crime like we say post brexit vote.

 

[Idris2002]

AfD's leader has just resigned at their post-election press conference and announced she will be taking her seat as an independent

This one was so sudden it makes me wonder what the angle is, or exactly what little game they're trying to play here. . .

 

[pocketscience]

This one was so sudden it makes me wonder what the angle is, or exactly what little game they're trying to play here. . .

Do you think it's orchestrated at a party level? The couple of articles I read about it (Spiegel & Zeit) implied that nobody in the party was expecting it.
My guess is she's just trying to distance herself from Gauland and position herself as the compassionate nazi (as opposed to the NPD-like Gauland types).
Will be interesting to see if her split takes on form and if any other of the more "moderate" nazis from the party join her.

It's still hard to tell if the AfD did so well because of Gaulands pre-election comments or dispite of them.

eta: he should have been nicked for this one instead he's leading Germany's 3rd largest party now...

 

[bemused]

Will people never learn?

They'll learn about the same time political parties start being less tone deaf to uncomfortable concerns. We've trained a generation of voters than putting their cross next to the most unpalatable person the ballot makes the folks in power sit up.

 

[Thimble Queen]

That "disposed of" comment is a an absolute disgrace.

The WW2 stuff is so blatant. People know exactly what they are voting for here.

 

[tim]

This one was so sudden it makes me wonder what the angle is, or exactly what little game they're trying to play here. . .

Isn't it fairly typical of parties on the far right. Look at UKIP or the BNP or the FN in France. Bigoted narcissists don't get on well with each other.