"Well I can now actually vote - but for whom?" dated March 18th, 2011
and
"Wahl-O-Mat - or who should you vote for in the German elections?" dated September 1st, 2013
and then proceed with this.
So today it is election day here. I keep getting emails telling me to vote. I keep getting stuff in my mailbox from the various parties advising me to vote for them.
Problem being, as a foreign national I cannot vote. I can in the European Parliament elections, I can in the vote for the mayor of Frankfurt, but I cannot vote in German national elections (as I am not a German national) and I cannot vote in the Hessen state elections (held on the same day) as that has national implications (i.e. who will end up in the upper house of the German Parliament). So anyway.
I delineated in the first of the two above posts (the one dated 2011) how the German election system works approximately (at that point on a regional basis, but the national model is not that different) and whom you could vote for.
In the second of these posts I pointed out how they can get your opinions in line with what the parties are supposedly proposing (allowing for the fact that it is not always easy to reduce party positions to simple yes / no / neutral choices. As in my question: how do you get unemployment down?).
Anyway out of the 29 parties standing in the election this time round, for Wahl-O-Mat (see above), I chose 8.
Those being:
1. CDU/CSU - mainstream conservative, for American readers, think of the GOP pre-Reagan
2. FDP - Known here as the "liberals", but that is "traditional liberalism" (more "libertarian" US style, though also pro-EU, maybe surprisingly)
3. SDP - modern European Social Democrats (no nationalisation any more, and "business friendly" - see Blair's Labour Party in the UK for economic policy, almost)
4. Die Grünen (German German Party) - standard European Green party (actually probably the most important Green party in Europe) - suspicious of big business, strongly pro-small business (particularly selling environmentally-friendly products)
5. Die Linke (literally "the Left") - the former East German Communist Party (modified, they do not want the Stasi and the barbed wire fences and the gun turrets back (?)), allied with the renegades in the West who left the SDP. Red-blooded Socialism.
6. Die Piraten (the Pirates) - pro-computer privacy, anti-state involvement. Assange-ists maybe?
7. NPD (abbreviations translate to National Party of Germany) - neo-Fascist
8. Die Rentner Partei (the pensioners/senior citizens' party) - self-explanatory.
For more detail see the first of the pieces above - the one dated March 18th, 2011.
What Wahl-O-Mat gave me:
1. Piraten 64.7%
2. Grünen 62.7%
3. Rentner 60.8%
4. NPD 59.8%
5= CDU/CSU 58.8%
5= Linke 58.8%
7. SPD 53.9%
8. FDP 40.2%
Shocked? I was. It possibly says more about Wahl-O-Mat than it says about my opinions. In fact you should replace the word "possibly" with "probably". See fascinatingly the tie between the diametrically opposed CDU/CSU and die Linke!
About the only non-shocking element of that result is that I would have so little faith in the FDP (their policies strike me as being heavily biased in favour of the mega-rich and everybody else can go swim in the sea of proverbial sharks. No thank you).
For the rest, that the NPD would finish as high as fourth? There is no way in 2 million of the proverbial month of Sundays that I would ever support them. They are the most pronounced anti-EU anti-Euro party in Germany (a more "respectable" version of this has since turned up, but it should not be taken that seriously), they dislike most foreigners and hate the rest .... NO WAY! (see also the postscript).
As for the Pirates finishing first?
Check the individual questions on Wahl-O-Mat. Check against the results of the individual questions. You find this rider "the party has no stated position upon this issue". I did that several times with the Pirates. They do not seem to be penalised in the voting.
Go back to the famous slogan from the Clinton elections in the US - "It's the economy, stupid".
IT IS THE ECONOMY, STUPID!!!!
About the only things that the Pirates have to say on the economy is that "everyone should have a good job". Of course they should! You get that from loads of different parties. Take the PSG (a more intellectual, less gutter-snipe version of die Linke who are extraordinarily good at producing slogans about good jobs for all and an end to unemployment) - laudable, but how do you get there? Enter the words "Piraten" and the German word for economy, "Wirtschaft" on google.de. Try finding any current policy initiatives? They still seem to be stuck on the "we are still working that out" excuse from 2-3 years back. NOT WORTH 5 MINUTES OF MY TIME!
I do not want foreign spy agencies or the German government hacking my emails? Of course not, but the economy is far more important than that. Government spying on the poor? Shouldn't boosting the economy to raise the standard of living come first????
And as for the Pirates' take on unemployment. Look at some items on google.de after replacing the word "Wirtschaft" with "Arbeitslosigkeit" (unemployment). Some comments from the Pirates are positively scathing - about the unemployed, not the unemployment!
They are nothing but a one-issue protest bucket party, strong on image and weak on substance.
Unemployment is an issue. Germany has "low unemployment" we are told. Something like 5.5 %, which equals 2.5 to 3 million unemployed. The CDU/CSU-FDP coalition are proud of this.
2.5 million unemployed? That number is a disgrace. It is far, far too high, and getting it down by at least 2 million (to the numbers from the Adenauer-Erhard days) should be the number one priority!
And that ignores underemployment. Which is massive.
I saw one seditious item on Facebook (which I have again left for security reasons) indicating that the real figure for unemployment here was 7 million. Which would not surprise me. At all!
The situation really requires a return to the production-growth bias of the Adenauer-Erhard CDU/CSU (on a European scale, with EU initiatives) with the Schumacher-Brandt led SDP prodding them, not the banking-biased nonsense of the Kohl-Merkel CDU/CSU with the Steinbrück led SDP and its banking allies merely carping about method and not substance. Dynamising the economy, not letting it stagnate. And getting the European partners on board. One place they could start would be getting the Chinese to be forced to float their currency so that it rises (and rises and rises) to its true rate. If they want to benefit from the global market economy, they should play the game according to the same rules as everyone else!
And this would help stop the precipitous decline in European manufacturing and encourage us to produce more on the continent - which should create jobs!
A repeat result of the last election? Do not expect anything to improve much, even slowly. When you sweep the dust under the carpet, the dust is still there.
My two favourite politicians in Germany (Claudia Roth of die Grünen and Sigmar Gabriel of the SDP - who actually seems to be interested in how the economy impacts people, not simply how well (?) the economy is working, a sadly isolated example) will probably hardly feature in this election.
The result at the moment seems close to a dead-heat or a slight majority for more of the same. If we ended up with a Frankfurt coalition (Frankfurt City has recently had a CDU - Grünen coalition), it might be more interesting. At least the mixture of "management" and "initiatives" sounds interesting on paper. The SDP under Schröder watched its reputation decline, at least where domestic policy is concerned, and in-fighting seems to have replaced policy initiatives. Their absence from the government would not be that frightening.
But in an indecisive election, the possibility of a grand coalition (CDU/CSU-SDP) would be possible. It didn't work too badly the last time (2006-2009 including the global crisis of 2008), and the SDP are more pro-growth than the CDU (let's face it, isn't "growth" a better idea than "austerity"????), but given the personalities involved, it doesn't bear thinking about.
Anyway more in a couple of days time when we know the outcome. I must remember to go out tomorrow and buy a hairshirt.
Postscript.
One of the questions on Wahl-O-Mat involved getting rid of the Euro. The NPD's position was as might be expected (if essentially BS). And also sounded like a word-for-word translation of the sort of comment that Nigel Farage of the EXP/UKIP has on the subject. Interesting allies that they have in Europe .....
Postscript for the 2021 election (January 2nd, 2022). After becoming a naturalised German citizen in 2019 I actually got the chance to vote in the 2021 election. Checking Wahl-o-Mat again the results were much more accurate. Die Grünen first with 67%, some margin ahead of the rest, and the Piraten party nowhere. Come the election itself I split my vote - different parties for the constituency vote as against the party vote. On tactical grounds. And no! The AfD did not get one second's worth of consideration from me.
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