German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT | Hacker News Reader

German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

wer-gewinnt-die-wahl.de

24 pointskoustubhs80 comments

I'm curious how well this will fare in a German context, as opposed to the US, where 538 now seems a solid part of the campaign season.

Some differences come to mind: voter participation in DE is higher and campaign cost is much lower, meaning it is perhaps a bit less about activating your supporters and more about actually getting people to change their preferences.

Volatility seems really high, too - see the recent rise and fall of the Greens. There's also a few weird turning points, like the 5% quorum that could conceivably hit the Left this season. And there's the non-fixed number of seats.

So: congrats, INWT, for the nice marketing. Let's see if you picked a good model :)

German elections are much less tactical and significantly more boring than US elections. The US system creates much bigger swings based on small differences and creates much more of a narrative around campaign strategies. In Germany you pretty much just look at one poll for all parties and the popularity of the potential chancellors, but that's it.

The election is also far less influential, because there will always be a coalition in power, where sometimes single-seat differences (often resulting from weird specialties of the election system like Ueberhangmandate and Ausgleichsmandate) decide on the (non-)viability of some option.

And all the election programme of a party is very much up for discussion in coalition talks: A famous example of a coalition compromise: 2005 SPD promised "leave VAT at 16%", CDU promised "VAT raise to 18%". Their compromise? raise VAT to 19%.

The election is the boring part, the talks right after the election decide what will happen.

My favorite example of that is from 1909; Churchill describing the number of battleships to be built.

“The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight.”

We had a famous case of this in the German federal election of 2005. The conservatives (CDU/CSU) wanted to increase sales tax by 1%, the social democrats (SPD) were opposed to increasing it at all. They ended up forming a coalition that raised the sales tax by 3%.

this isn't a bad thing

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I like boring and reliable elections with more than two choices. But I suspect that this also means that there is simply not that much interest for a 538-like site in Germany.

Greens look a blip caused by the slow vaccine rollout. Their peak is right around when people were maximally angry about how far the EU was behind the UK.

Nope. The blip coincides with and was caused by a corruption scandal involving quite a few CDU/CSU politicians. As well as an increase in Greens' press coverage when they announced their candidates.

Both influences have subsided by now

This is wrong. April and May was peak anger about the coronavirus response. Around that time, the political conversations among Germans was entirely about the virus and how sick of it they were, and they were blaming the party in power. People care far more about being stuck at home for another summer than they care about corruption, or the media splash made by Baerbock. Plus, von der Leyen serves as a convenient symbol of an EU bureaucracy run as a retirement home for the incompetent and well-connected, and she's a CDU politician. Baerbock's appeal was that she would be a change from a status quo that failed.

But then since mid-May they administered 40 million doses, and everything is forgiven. Just subjectively, it went from no one I know is vaccinated, to everyone is either vaccinated or has an appointment to be vaccinated. Summer isn't canceled after all.

Let's hope, they're wrong. This corrupt idiot will destroy anything and everything. He just signed a paper to make building wind turbines A LOT harder and even wants to prevent people to take legal action against it.

As someone who knows nothing about that issue, what you said is neither here nor there. That makes it look like you're just repeating a political talking point without understanding why it matters or what it means.

There's nothing inherently wrong with making building wind turbines harder. Maybe it's for safety reasons, or to protect the environment or workers rights or property rights or whatever. It's absolutely the government's job to make some activities more difficult when necessary.

There would be nothing inherently wrong with making building wind turbines harder if you actually presented an alternative means of reaching carbon neutrality fast.

Not sure you understand my point. Imagine, for example, the industry was poorly regulated and filled with cowboys. Lots of workers were getting killed in accidents and the government made stricter safety regulations to protect them but it also increased the difficulty of building wind turbines. Is that really a bad thing? Should they sacrifice human life to get maximum speed towards carbon neutrality?

I live in a German community considering building wind turbines in our nearby forest. The installations in our region usually use Siemens Gamesa turbines and are part of a coalition between industry and academia, and it ain't their first rodeo. The industry is neither dangerous nor amateur, but it IS plagued by a ton of special interest resistance and disinformation.

Two details, lawsuits and safety:

The lawsuits filed for every single turbine project are a major pain. The anti-windmill crowd is a perfect example of German efficiency. They inject their opinions and objections from every reach of the country into every local community's discussion. Most of it is pseudoscience, like noise effects. I can hear the Autobahn from nearly every part of my town and its surrounding nature trails. Getting the legal roadblocks to green energy out of the way would be a victory for the climate. (From what I've witnessed, Germans are fairly resistant to change and very eager to protest: Stuttgart 21, Cyber Valley, Tesla, Berlin Airport, Querdenker, Fridays for Future)

If the German government wanted more regulation in the name of safety, there are easier pickings than the [likely completely unionized] wind turbine industry: ban traditional Maibaum raising, implement an Autobahn speed limit, limit fireworks during New Years Eve, change public policy and security stance toward football (soccer) matches, more aggressively surveil fringe movements.

Limiting fireworks: check

Football: partially checked

surveillance of perceived 'fringes': checked

speed limit: in discussion for autobahn, rolled out in more and more parts of cities, so partially checked

wtf is/was cyber valley? silicon saxony?

I see your point. However, this is not what's happening in Germany. Last year the Netherlands managed to build more wind turbines than Germany. I don't think you need reckless endangerment of anybody or anything to beat that number.

imaginary scenarios are relevant to actual politics being criticized how?

That's exactly the point the grandparent made - as long as we don't know the actual circumstances, we can only imagine scenarios (that can go either way) and these do not matter.

so the point is that a short throwaway comment in an online forum didn't contain the full context for people who know nothing about the situation? And instead of asking for context we rather go "oh but there are theoretical situations where your statement is bad!"?

exporectomy asked for the context in his first comment [0]. adrianN (the OP) replied by saying that he thinks there is no scenario where this might be a good thing, so exporectomy provided one. This shows that simply filling in an imaginary scenario is not sufficient, as you can spin the story either way - making imaginary scenarios useless, as you correctly pointed out.

So the overall this subthread is asking for context and then clarifying why it's needed.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709355

Yes. Without the details, the information says neither good or bad about the politician so what's the point of saying anything more than "I don't like him"? It's the type of fact that people repeat because it fits their prejudice and they forget that it lacks meaning. Great for talking past people with and helping no-one understand anything.

Nuclear power plants ?

No. For whatever reason, basically all political parties in Germany are anti-nuclear, and the country is phasing out their last working reactors next year.

Not quite. AfD is pro-nuclear, CDU/CSU is opportunistically pro/con, FDP the same (i guess). Only the left is firmly opposed. The thing is that the anti-nuclear public sentiment is strong enough that any pro-nuclear movement or politics is doomed to fail. Any pro-nuclear move is political suicide.

Having Armin Laschet as the new Kanzler would be an unmitigated disaster. He's about as clever as George W., and as helpless and uninformed as Jeb. Thank god he's not actively malicious. An empty vessel of a politician.

Let's hope a coalition with the Greens will force him towards reasonable policies nevertheless.

I think Baerbock looks quite on paar with Laschet, problem-wise:

Where Laschet had his invented grades because he misplaced some tests during his time as a professor, Baerbock plagiarized in her book. Both have had "problems" in their CV.

Both are the second-rate candiates of their party, chosen for pleasing everyone, not for being outstanding or competent in any way. Baerbock was chosen over Habeck because she is a woman, where Habeck was obviously more qualified. Laschet was chosen over Merz and Soeder because the latter ones would have had some controversial ideas. Whereas Laschet, while being unpopular in general, never stepped on anyones toes (that being his only notable skill).

Whether any outcome will or won't be a desaster depends on the coalition that is formed after the election. And after the coalition is formed, who is going to occupy which ministry, and what compromises they had to make to get the coalition going. My nightmare scenario would be a CDU/CSU/Green coalition where the greens impose all their eco taxes and policies, but just on the peons, because the CDU protects their buddies in the industry and agriculture. Any eco tax reimbursement the Greens are currently promising will of course be swallowed up by "sorry, there is no money" and "we need to be fiscally responsible after all".

She did not plagiarize in her book. The guy who "broke the story" has a blog with the last 8 stories about how the Greens would destory Germany. He is properly obsessed. Here's a law expert of our public broadcaster explaining how much there is to the story: Nothing. [0]

This is a predictable campaign to prevent a centre-left coalition.

[0] https://twitter.com/fewizi/status/1409869123111342092

Even if that were correct (which I would doubt, German public broadcasters are very much pro-Green), it would in consequence mean that there is no copyright on any of Wikipedia or any non-opinion factual press piece. Which is obviously ridiculous as the replies also point out.

There are indeed a few non-lawyers grasping at straws in the replies to the twitter thread. It is not like Mr. Zimmermann is alone in his assessment. Other renowned experts like Professor for law Andreas Fischer-Lescano are of the same opinion. [1]

But if you think the public broadcasters are biased towards the Green party, I must really question your political literacy. How would you even come to that conclusion?

[1] https://www.waz.de/politik/annalena-baerbock-plagiatsjaeger-...

https://www.nzz.ch/international/das-herz-des-deutschen-jour...

I must in turn question your literacy: Have you ever opened a newspaper? They all have their obvious bias. Seen TV? obvious bias. Famously the ZDF was founded after Adenauer had enough of the ARDs leftist bias. Nothing of that is new, and you have to be purposefully ignorant or illiterate to not see it. Of course it has become a fashion to only decry a bias in media of the opposing creed, calling the agreeing media fair and unbiased. But I would think that people can see through that...

As to the legal situation around Baerbocks book: Even if it were legal, it still is a political screwup of the highest magnitude. Why? Because now she is in one tradition with the likes of Guttenberg, Schavan, Giffey and others.

The forecast over time shows the green candidate to rise sharply to be favorite and then decline over the last 2 months - what happened?

At the beginning, there were irregularities in her CV. Now she has a recently unearthed history of plagiarism in her book and the party tried its best to avoid confession of any wrongdoing.

Also, there was a gender-related shitshow in Green primaries in Saarland. Basically the country leadership of the Green party hates the idea that a female #1 was voted out of the Saarland list three times in a row, thus giving an opportunity for a male candidate to lead the list (contrary to the Green rule that odd-numbered positions in a list, including #1, of course, must go to women). Saarland is small but still pretty prominent in German politics, generating a lot of federal-level politicians. And a lot of attention, because the story is pretty bizarre. The next chosen woman for #2, Irina Gaydukova, had a very bad interview that basically showed her unable to address very simple question and cast doubt on her ability to speak German at a professional level. It reminded some voters thad IdPol is sort-of tacky and the Green party is very deeply into IdPol.

Baerbock does not seem to be a very strong candidate personally. She was basically chosen over Habeck because she was of the right gender, not because of any obvious political advantage over him. But Germany has had 16 years of female chancellorship by now, so the idea of having a woman run the country is no longer particularly new or attractive.

But to be honest, all the leading candidates are fairly boring, perhaps with the exception of Olaf Scholz, who nevertheless leads a very dysfunctional party (SPD) and does not really have a shot.

So it is a fight between equals in mediocrity.

>At the beginning, there were irregularities in her CV. Now she has a recently unearthed history of plagiarism in her book and the party tried its best to avoid confession of any wrongdoing.

The CV irregularities seem to be rather minor (probably deliberate) miss-translations from English to German, if I understood it all correctly. Definitely not good, but hardly worthy of a proper scandal. The plagiarism stuff is all BS. Did someone use ctrl-c and ctrl-v? Yes. To an illegal or even immoral extent? IMO, no.

Given current EU and German legislation protects products of the press down to "smallest snippets" (generally thought to be less than 7 words), courts will quite certainly find it illegal, at least when pertaining to copying from newspapers. Immoral depends on your point of view, I do find the respective laws immoral, so any action to break them is no moral concern of mine.

"Definitely not good, but hardly worthy of a proper scandal."

I do not judge her hard for that, but I am definitely interested in her reaction.

The position of a German federal chancellor is a "high friction" one. Whoever gets elected will be drawn into power games with Putin, Biden and Xi. This requires certain toughness and willingness to fight back smartly. I am not sure yet whether Baerbock has it; her experience with high-level political positions is very limited.

The CDU had a rough period where they were accused of mismanaging several important parts of the covid strategy (including giving contracts for pursuing masks to their cronies) and they couldn't figure out who should become their candidate (they don't have primary elections and Laschet who was prefered by the establishment was vastly less popular overall than Söder. Laschet is now their candidate).

So the Greens had a good start but their candidate has no experience in government and has recently been painted as incompetent. She inflated some parts of her CV and apparently didn't cite all the sources she used for her book (even though she sometimes copied paragraphs almost verbatim). Nothing too bad, but it still doesn't look good.

> Laschet who was prefered by the establishment was vastly less popular overall than Söder. Laschet is now their candidate

I too was quite baffled when they went with Laschet. I've since heard the theory that the CDU leadership was worried that Söder would transform the Union party into an ego show like Christian Kurz did with the Austrian conservatives, or like Christian Lindner did with the German liberals. If they genuinely believe that threat to be worth taking serious, I can see why they would prefer Laschet. A one-man party is fine as long as the leader is going strong, but falls apart quickly when they disappear.

She got caught stuffing her qualifications with memberships in a lot of high profile organizations. In the same way a software developer would list a valve partnership in his qualifications after buying a game on steam.

There where mistakes in here resume. Nothing too bad, but I guess this depends on which political side you are on. Of course PR used it to gain a foothold and it seems to work pretty good.

Guess the other party saw the numbers and activated its network to counter.

The Greens had and squandered the oppportunity to present themselves as being fresh, unencumbered, honest, evidence-based, non-corrupt. Baerbock's resume problems and the plagiarized book sections destroyed that hope, as well as her election as a women over an obviously more qualified man (Habeck). So the Greens lost their advantage in that regard, now they are just one bad option among other bad ones with regards to political ethics.

At the same time, the CDU started to enact some Green policies like raising fuel prices, but doing so with the hint that they would look out for the economy and the little man and be more responsible than the Greens. Since the greens also include some pretty radical eco-deindustrialist people, that move made the CDU look like a better alternative while still soothing peoples' bad eco conscience.

So yes, bad PR work by the Greens, good PR work by the CDU/CSU.

IFIR the sharp dip was around the time when the Greens announced their election program, which included rising petrol prices and some other things that are not all too popular with car owners. Still a big no-no in Germany apparently (funny enough the CDU has roughly the same goals, but I guess their PR is better).

1) The overall "mood" wasn't good, as we were locked in perpetual half-lockdown and other developed countries like the UK and US had a better vaccine rollout than us. - Now the country is opening up again, vaccine rollout is going well, so all is forgotten and forgiven.

2) There were multiple corruption scandals coming to light in the ruling party: In spring 2020 the halth ministry ordered overprized masks from politically well-connected entrepreneurs. In a different story, multiple backbenchers and local politicans of the conservative parties had backroom deals with the Aserbaijani dictatorship. The conservative party in Germany has often been caught in corruption, but it seems to hurt them much less than the other parties.

3) The CDU/CSU elected a candidate who doesn't inspire much confidence.

The dip of the Greens can be explained by a mix of the rollout going well now, the scandals being forgotten again, and massive (social) media campaign against the Greens, often on the basis of false information. (Actually reminds me of Hillary's emails)

I have immigrated into this country 12 years ago and became citizen 3 years ago and still, to this day, some facets of german culture fascinate me. Most of germans have seriously high threshold for „pain, which reflects in almost every everyday life situation:

1. customer service is abysmal and they are ok with it.

2. bureucratic machine is horrible and they are ok with it.

3. politics stagnating last decades and they are okay with it.

4. so little doctors with super long waiting times for so many people (to the point of memeing about it) - and they are okay with it.

5. no wealth accumulation through generations because its impossible to buy anything. Everyone rents and they are okay with it. Nothing gets built, infrastructre expnsion is non existent in cities.

Impotence in the government (digitalisation is a joke right now, everyone knows berlin airport fiasco, now vaccination stuff) is the most infuriating one for me and yet they still vote for CDU. At this point I have no idea how to understand this. CDU have lost many of its voters not because people had „enough“ and switched, but because lots of CDU electorate just died of old age. sigh

Regarding point 1, we Germans absolutely do NOT like someone getting in the way if we could do it ourselves faster and better, so please let us put our grocery into bags ourselves. The second worst thing is imo waiters hovering your table instead of doing their job and letting you enjoy your meal in peace. (Thinking of it, you might have the problem that you are not beckoning the waiter over if you need them? If you don't, you might actually wait quite a while and perceive that as bad service;)

Very much agree on Germans wanting to be left alone: I'm always annoyed at waiters abroad, because they keep asking and bugging me if I want anything else, if everything is OK, if the food was adequate. If I need anything I'll becon, if something is not right I'll tell you, leave me be!

I can fully understand that foreigners expecting the above level of buzzing around from a waiter are disappointed in Germany. Expectations here are completely different.

I really feel what you're saying. It's deeply aggravating. I feel a lot of it is due to the high level of wealth and overall satisfaction that much of German society has experienced for the past few decades (inb4: I know there's poverty here). It's a very weird form of decadence, based on the principle that "this worked well so far".

My coping strategy is to remind myself that it's probably the linked flip side of many of the things that I appreciate - good labour and consumer protection, good healthcare, public transport, a not-totally-fucked income distribution.

But: yeeeaaaah.

I think you can answer your own question.

> I have immigrated into this country 12 years ago and became citizen 3 years ago

It somehow still is better than the alternatives on the grand scheme of things. Short answer: Record low unemployment rates (before the pandemic).

Yes, and I love it here. It doesnt mean you have to accept all the problems „because everywhere else is worse“ - this is the worst whataboutism there is.

> so little doctors with super long waiting times for so many people (to the point of memeing about it) - and they are okay with it.

What action would you suggest the average person to take if they are not ok with this situation?

Vote for a party that makes medical universities a priority! There are laughably many german students studying medicine in other EU states and coming back, because current central system is overwhelmed by applicants and there are so little seats.

The main problem is that all the doctors sit in big cities (you can't walk 50 meters in the middle of Berlin without stumbling over a doctor's office), but far too few in urban areas.

Rural infrastructure is nonexistent. Where you can reach any settled area by public transport in Switzerland, in Germany public transport exists only in the cities and their surroundings. Maybe a few tourist spots. So to be reachable by patients, all specialized doctors almost have to be city-dwelling. General physicians not so much, but then there is the question: high-earning in a city with proper infrastructure, or low-earning in the sticks with the last remaining old people.

Huh? I travel every few weeks from Berlin into my tiny little home village in the Ore Mountains by train, and what's not reachable by train has bus connections. The urban infrastructure is (mostly) fine. I guess doctors can simply make more money in cities with a bigger selection of rich privately insured patients to milk :)

as big as a fiasco as BER was/is - it turns out it's (attempted) infrastructure expansion. That and stuff like U5 extension, etc (is it a tourist line? sure, but it's work being done). Trialing/using Electric buses is another one (though they have suffered in both heat and cold).

I'll grant you digitization being crap - don't understand why copper is still king here.

Politics I don't pretend to understand or care about, i just like that nobody's shooting/assassinating/oppressing each other (turns out that's a surprisingly high bar in the world).

vaccinations definitely sucked/were late, but it's finally now ahead of many (even first world) countries [0]

[0]: some selection: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

BER isn't really an expansion, it is replacing the two other airports in Berlin that were more central and had to close down (because they were old and too central to not be a major noise problem), Tegel (TXL) and Tempelhof (THF) and parts of the old function of Schoenefeld (SXF, formerly a regular airport, now just a government airfield, but right next to/part of BER).

still a nicer airport than the dump that was SXF (TXL did have a special place in my heart though)

That said, flying budget airlines remains a ridiculous experience at all european airports.

6. Vee arr värry scroogy, therefore can't afford the platform ticket to enter the free revolution train ;->

I wonder how much it costs to walk up to one of these forecasters and buy the first place. Given how popular forecasting seems to be, I am convinced there is a good bussiness model behind.

How would they make the 3rd party poll results they show fit with the false prediction?

Now it's only a small step until we finally have the technology to make voting completely unnecessary. /s

The three candidates seem to be from the left. That's really odd. I guess things there are like here in Spain and the right wing is ridiculously emasculated?

(Someone flagged this but I would still like an explanation. If you don't want to post it that's fine but you don't have to flag it)

The CDU is the largest center right party And most definitely NOT on the left of the German political scale.

The greens have some conservative views and are quite popular with middle class, middle wealth people. (White collar workers)

Most Germans would not consider CDU/CSU to be "left". I think they understand themselves as a center-right conservative party.

Western European center-right is often described as left in the USA.

... Which is nonsense.

Those (both American leftists, and Europeans who listen to them) who say that "Democrats in the US would be right wing in Europe/Canada" have to (for example) then agree that all major political parties in Canada and every European country outside the UK and Ireland are right of US Democrats, because there is no significant opposition to voter ID laws anywhere. Macron's Les Republicains got elected because voters liked his vow to get tough on unions and union pensions, and privatize more infrastructure, neither of which appears in Biden's campaign platform.

Speaking of which, several European countries have privatized post offices; not just telecom companies that were parts of PTTs, but entire postal services. It is the rare European country that hasn't sold off at least part of their postal services. The EU explicitly requires postal monopolies to end in member states; whether government-owned or not, EU postal services do not have the USPS's monopoly on first-class mail. Yet no major party in the US seriously talks about privatizing the USPS.^1 Does this mean that American politics is "far to the left" of that of Germany and the UK, both of which have completely sold off their postal services to private investors?

^1 And no, it's not because of the Constitution. Article I Section 8 only gives Congress the authority "To establish Post Offices", as opposed to requiring a government-run one. Certainly nothing in the Constitution mandates the USPS's first-class mail monopoly.

Well, a US right-wing party would be called fascist around here and might get forbidden at some point.

Yeah, I've read that Hillary Clinton would be considered right-wing in e.g. Germany.

The most likely chancellor candidate is CDU (Christian Democrats, which is right of the middle), and the next likely is from the Greens. IMHO even whether the Greens are actually "left" can be debated, most of their voters are well off city dwellers with green, but not necessarily left political views.

If you mean the chancellor candidates, the most likely one is Laschet from the CDU, which is certainly not left. They're the major conservative party in Germany.

I read their party programme and they weren't conservative. They are, like "right wing" parties in Spain, conservatives only in name. They are as progressive as the rest of left wing parties. Hence my question.

They are conservative in the sense that they don't want too much change and only slowly adapt to new things.

Being sceptical of flag waving nationalism, in favour of global trade agreements and the EU and taking an (at least verbal) stand against the far right (and the far left) is the definition of a conservative mindset in Germany.

You seem to use a different definition of "left" and "right" than me. What points in the party programme make them a "left" party?

This is kind of a philosophical question, innit? To me, social progressivism is left, and these CDU people seem to be full of it.

They are the ones slowing down or preventing pretty much everything I would expect to be labelled "social progressivism", so I have no clue what you are on about.

I admit I didn't read the programme yet, can you give some concrete points which you find socially progressive? I can't remember much social progressiveness coming out of that party in the past, but my memory is usually pretty bad.

Ecological sustainability, sexual equality, integration policies for immigrants... All I've seen just from skimming through their PDF

I find it amusing that you group sustainability under social progressiveness, imho conserving natural resources so that future generations can live a similar life to current generations is an important part of conservative politics. Caring about the environment was for example a popular policy of the NSDAP ("Umweltschutz ist Heimatschutz" is something you still hear some nationalist parties say). Arguably environmentalism gained popularity at least in part because of nationalism.

For the other points I think the devil is in the details. If you only count parties as "not left" that are completely against sexual equality and immigration you will have a hard time finding anything. Perhaps the AfD would be closer to your "not left" definition, but even they have openly homosexual members in important positions, and I believe they're not against immigration of highly qualified workers...

Do you want to live in an industrial wasteland? If not, then Umweltschutz IS Heimatschutz!

Even if the wasted lands are afar, pollution tends to seep out. It's all connected, you know?

They're making a point of being fiscally conservative.

They're advocating for more surveillance and "tough on crime" policies. Mentioning this weird media-hyped "crime family problem".

They're against more integrated school-system reform.

I want to see where you're finding all this social progressivism in their program. Only thing I can see is like "more women in positions of leadership" maybe. But that's about it from what I can see.

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