Elections in various countries

[hwhatting]

There are now rumors in Germany - so far, it seems to be only rumors - that the CDU/CSU might replace their current nominee for Chancellor Armin Laschet with Bavarian Premier and CSU leader Markus Söder after all, given that their poll results are currently a bit disappointing for them, at least compared to what they're used to. How they would do that six weeks before the election is anyone's guess.

On one hand, the position of chancellor candidate is not a formal position like party chairman, it's just an indication by a party to the voters whom the party would install as chancellor if they get the votes for that person in the Bundestag. But that commitment was endorsed by a CDU party congress, so this would either have to be reversed by an extraordinary party congress, which I doubt could be organised in the remaining time, or Laschet would have to resign in favour of Söder. I don't see that happening either. As Creyeditor says, voices suggesting that Laschet was the wrong choice have been around for months. But Laschet is a tenacious fighter, not the guy for flashy showdowns, but doggedly determined. He'll reckon that noone in the Union will risk the spectacle of a fight and protacted crisis in the party that would happen if he were pushed out, so shortly before the elections. He'll only leave (or be pushed out) if the Union won't lead the next Government after the elections, which would imply a Green- or SPD-led coalition with the Union as junior partner or without the Union. Those are possible, but not the most probable scenarios right now. But in that case, Söder wouldn't go to Berlin anyway; he is sitting comfortably as Prime Minister of Bavaria and the only post in Berlin he's interested in is the one of Chancellor.
I assume if something really dramatic would happen before the elections - revelations that Laschet's favourite dish is minced babies with puppies sprinkled on top, or the Union dropping behind both Greens and SPD in the polls, he might be pushed out, but I don't really expect that.

[MacAnDàil]

The Greens and SPD getting ahead of CDU would be excellent and not unlikely. They are within error range in some polls (several polls have shown Greens first while some recent polls show SPD only 1% behind CDU), and it's the SPD who has the most momentum at the moment, probably due to Scholz's handling of the flooding as finance minister, despite his Wirecard scandal (among others). And German polls generally seem more frequent and reliable than French ones.

But you're right: Laschet won't leave before the election, and Söder stays cosy in Bavaria unless he's sure of the chancellorship and nothing less.

[Raphael]

Here's something I've been wondering for a while. I wasn't sure whether to post it here or in the US politics thread, because it's about comparing political practice in different countries.

My question is: are there any other countries with two- or multiparty electoral systems where formal endorsements are as much of a thing as they are in the USA? You know, when a current or former politician, or sometimes a non-political celebrity or newspaper or what- or whoever releases some kind of formal statement officially supporting a specific candidate for office?

In the USA, that's apparently a completely routine part of politics. On the other hand, in, for instance, Germany, it's hardly ever done at all. Since politicians generally belong to parties, and since voters, in most elections (the only exceptions are in local politics), vote for parties, you generally know where each politician stands on how they'd like you to vote, anyway, so there's no point in them making it official. With newspapers or magazines, you usually know where on the political spectrum they stand, too, so there's no point in them making anything official, either - at most, they might make a show of pretending to be formally neutral. (A while ago, before a federal election, a local tabloid where I live that's generally known to be moderately center-left wanted to have one page making the case for voting SPD and one page making the case for voting CDU, and they apparently couldn't get any of their journalists or editors to write the latter, so they brought in the head of their sales department for that job.) And as far as internal power struggles within parties are concerned, those are, to some extent, still seen as rather tawdry stuff, dirty laundry better not aired in public, so people are usually careful about endorsements in those, too.

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure how I would translate the English word "endorsement", in the context of US politics, into German - I think I'd go with something like "formale Unterstützung" ("formal support").

So, how's the situation in countries other than the USA or Germany?

[Ares Land]

It's done quite a bit in France. It's customary that candidates that don't make the first round issue official endorsement (really, consignes de vote, voting instructions) of their favourite candidate in the second round. That's a really big deal especially when the far right makes it to the second round.

Various socialist personalities issued formal endorsements of Macron back in 2017. This despite there being an official socialist candidate (Hamon.) I'm still very mad about this.

I think that sort of thing has become more common lately. That's because French politics is such an enormous muddle since 2016-2017 that predicting who a given personality supports got really non-trivial.

[hwhatting]

@Raphael: I think a big reason why this is a thing in the U.S. are the primaries - people from the same party running against each other in elections that are relatively open (AFAIK, in many states you don't even have to be registered as supporter of a party to vote in a party's primary). So the voters need other cues to understand a candidate's positions than just their party membership; endorsements are one of those cues.
The most similar thing in Germany is the endorsements candidates for the position of party chairmanships get when that is determined by membership votes, e.g. Spahn endorsing Laschet after he himself dropped out of the race.

[Ares Land]

Oh, yes! And we started doing endorsements in France when we started having primaries.

[Raphael]

Belated thanks, Ares Land and hwhatting!

One thing I've noticed about the German electoral campaign is that, at least where I live, CDU campaign posters don't ever seem to show Laschet. I don't know if it's the same elsewhere, though.

[Creyeditor]

Green campaign posters rarely show Baerbock here. I feel like the CDU hasn't started really campaigning here, apart from showcasing local candidates.

[hwhatting]

Where I live (Bonn*)), I've seen Green posters with Baerbock and SPD posters with Scholz, but no CDU Posters with Laschet. There have been many reports that the base isn't fired up at all about Laschet, maybe that is reflected in that pattern.
With their poll ratings tanking, the Union is now getting the Socialist bogeyman out of the props closet and declaring that any vote for any other party would mean a leftist government. That's meant to mobilise their base and to prevent tactical voting for the FDP, which may join a "traffic light" coalistion with the SPD and the Greens.
*) Which has a Green mayor and a Green-led coalition on the city council since the last municipal elections..

[MacAnDàil]

Der Dunkle Parabelritter has since come out with other investigation videos like the Destroying of Armin Laschet that I had linked to earlier including criticism of Olaf Scholz and Philip Amthor. And this one about Annalena Baerbock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOo5LT3 ... abelritter. I thought I could watch it even though I support the Greens, because he makes interesting well-cited videos. It turns out there isn't actually any scandal he managed to find out more about her. In fact, some of the accusations against her aren't even true e.g. she did in fact work in Brussels after all. And the person who investigated the plagiarism accusations actively refused to investigate Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet.

[Pabappa]

Putin's United Russia party currently leading the results as votes come in for the parliamentary election, though perhaps with a slight loss of seats; note that this election does not involve Putin himself as the president is outside the parliamentary system in Russia. Meanwhile, voting in Hungary resumes today after a system disruption of unknown origin; the election is a primary being held to determine which faction of the vast opposition coalition has the right to take on Viktor Orban in the final election next year.

as for Canada, I actually know nearly nothing, but I will be following the livestream of results from there today as well.

[Moose-tache]

The Canadian election results are in. And... nothing happened.
Liberals: +3 seats (but only +1 net change from the results of 2019)
Conservatives: +0 (-2 net change)
Bloc Q: +2
NDP: +1
Greens: +0 (-1 net)

Has there ever been a (non-sham) election for a full-sized national legislature where the result was so similar to the status quo?

[MacAnDàil]

It didn't backfire as much as Theresa May's 2017 UK election.

The votes changed more significantly for the People Party and the Greens, even if the seats didn't.

[Moose-tache]

The votes changed more significantly for the People Party and the Greens, even if the seats didn't.

Well, that's another can of worms, since Canada patterns with its neighbor in having only a cursory relationship between who people vote for and who wins. The Conservatives actually got more votes than the Liberals, but only got 3/4 as many seats. Apparently Canada has a sort of backwards electoral topography, where it's the conservatives who are concentrated in fortress districts, and the liberals who are spread out just enough to win many districts by a slight margin.

[Ares Land]

The SPD seems to have done surprisingly well in Germany. (The articles I read seem pretty clueless as to what kind of coalition could be formed.)

[MacAnDàil]

Their support increased in the last few weeks. The Left are probably out (unfortunately), which probably leaves SPD, Green and Liberal as the most likely coalition given the statements of Scholz wanting a coalition with the Greens and without the CDU/CSU. But that requires the Greens and Liberals to get on, especially on taxes. It's been done on a regional level, but not a national one.

[hwhatting]

The SPD seems to have done surprisingly well in Germany. (The articles I read seem pretty clueless as to what kind of coalition could be formed.)

These are the options:
"Ampel" - SPD, Greens, FDP - the preferred option of the Greens, but not of the FDP. Chancellor would be Olaf Scholz, SPD.
"Jamaica" - CDU, Greens, FDP - the preferred option of the FDP, but not of the Greens. Chancellor would be Armin Laschet, CDU.
"Grand Coalition" - SPD, CDU - what we're having currently, but with the SPD in the lead and Scholz as chancellor. Both parties don't want to repeat the experience.
So it basically boils down to the Greens and FDP deciding under which constellation they realise most of their demands. The wooing and flirting already started during the evening on election day. The Greens want a more ambitious climate policy and investment into preventing climate change, the FDP deregulation, lower taxes, and no new debts. Right now, I wouldn't venture a prediction of which combination is more likely, Ampel or Jamaica; we'll get a Grand Coalition only if the Greens and the FDP overplay their hands and block each other. But it currently looks like they even want to explore a common position, so that looks promising.
(Personally; I'd prefer Ampel, but I could live with Jamaica, if that leads to action on climate change.)

[MacAnDàil]

I think Jamaica won't be any easier now than it was in 2017, when there were talks on it that failed. It should be harder now even, seeing as the CDU/CSU aren't first place any more. Anton Hofreiter of the Greens says it will probably be the traffic light (Ampel in German). And even the Bavarian conservative Markus Söder says it will likely be traffic light. And the politologist Albrecht von Lucke says it would be unthinkable for the Green supporters for the Greens to refuse Scholz and opt for the loser Laschet. And the easiest alliance out of the top three parties is Socialist with Green, as they've already had a government together in 1998-2003, and both Scholz and Robert Habeck of the Greens mentioned preferring a Socialist-Green alliance before election day. It's getting the FDP and Greens to work together that's the harder part. And they're already working on the discussions. Because the left-wing Red-Red-Green is no longer an option, traffic light is by far the most obvious option.

[hwhatting]

I think Jamaica won't be any easier now than it was in 2017, when there were talks on it that failed.

That seems to have failed because the Union and the Greens agreed first and the FDP had the impression they had to sign up to a deal or leave it. That's not how it's going this time.

It should be harder now even, seeing as the CDU/CSU aren't first place any more. Anton Hofreiter of the Greens says it will probably be the traffic light (Ampel in German). And even the Bavarian conservative Markus Söder says it will likely be traffic light. And the politologist Albrecht von Lucke says it would be unthinkable for the Green supporters for the Greens to refuse Scholz and opt for the loser Laschet. And the easiest alliance out of the top three parties is Socialist with Green, as they've already had a government together in 1998-2003, and both Scholz and Robert Habeck of the Greens mentioned preferring a Socialist-Green alliance before election day. It's getting the FDP and Greens to work together that's the harder part. And they're already working on the discussions. Because the left-wing Red-Red-Green is no longer an option, traffic light is by far the most obvious option.

All true, but don't count Jamaica out yet. All depends on the positions of the FDP, without whom Ampel is not possible; if they demand things on taxes and deregulation that the SPD, and especially the left wing of the SPD, cannot swallow, it's still possible that the Greens may decide that it's more important for them to achieve their climate-related goals in a Jamaica coalition than to be outside of Government. The Greens are closer to the SPD than to the Union on many points, e.g. regarding social spending, taxation, and debt, but they have different priorities, and the Union may be desperate enough to actually offer them more on climate and environmental issues than the SPD.

[Moose-tache]

God, politics in a Utopian country are boring as hell. How is it even an option for the main center-left and main center-right parties to form a coalition? What's the point? Where's the fun in that? Who's getting villified? How do you decide which facts are real? It's like Germans are beings of pure energy going through the motions of democratic struggle just so we Primitives don't feel bad.