Elections in various countries

[Raphael]

Moose-tache: Oh, there is a certain amount of vilification going on - during the campaign, Laschet & friends warned all the time about the horrors of socialism that would destroy the country under an SPD-led government. It's just that politics in countries with multiparty systems and coalition governments often makes for strange bedfellows - people spend the campaign up to election day vilifying each other, and then grudgingly form coalitions with each other once the election is over.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

That seems more sensible than perpetual obstruction.

[Ares Land]

The view of the SPD as dangerous socialist is amusing from a foreign perspective.
Here in France we're told they're either despicable Thatcherites or commendable reasonable centrists, depending on who you ask (our right-wingers are still in awe of the Hartz reforms.)


Parliamentary systems and coalition-building certainly feels more democratic to me.

[hwhatting]

The view of the SPD as dangerous socialist is amusing from a foreign perspective.
Here in France we're told they're either despicable Thatcherites or commendable reasonable centrists, depending on who you ask (our right-wingers are still in awe of the Hartz reforms.)

Well, the SPD has moved somewhat further to the left since Hartz. They now want to be associated with them as little as possible and even want to roll them back. That said, the real socialist bogeyman for Germany's right is the Left Party; the CDU/CSU claimed that a vote for Scholz would be a vote for a "radical" left-wing coalition of SPD, Greens, and the Left Party, into which the left wing of the SPD would force Scholz.
Scholz is on the right of the SPD and he wouldn't have felt at home in such a left coalition, but he didn't want to exclude it during the campaign in order to keep his options open and to keep the more left-wing supporters of the SPD fired up. Now, the option of a left coalition is dead anyway, as the Left Party got too few votes to supply a sufficient number of seats to such a coalition; it actually barely made it into the Bundestag.

Parliamentary systems and coalition-building certainly feels more democratic to me.

I feel the same.

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.

It would be nice if that were true
In addition to what Raphael said, there's also the point that the rabid mouth-foaming conspiracy nuts on the right mostly sit in the AfD, with whom almost nobody*) wants to talk. Luckily, they got less votes than last time.
*) The exception are a significant number of CDU politicians in Eastern Germany, where the AfD has become the main party on the right in many regions, especially in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. These politicians feel that they limit their options too much, and that they will lose even more conservative voters if they pair up with centre-left parties all the time.

[Ares Land]

The prospects for the upcoming presidential election are pretty surprising.

Notably: we got two far-right candidates. In addition to Marine Le Pen, it looks like we'll have Eric Zemmour too. Zemmour is a far-right media personality. He's considered to be something of an intellectual. One of his many, many intellectual gems, he wants Muslims to give good old, French, Christian first names. (Apparently kids named Mohammed are an unbelievable insult to the French nation.) The platform is unclear, but it's basically about outlawing foreigners, Muslim, and women forever. I read one of his books. It's about as if someone had published the drunken ramblings of your racist uncle.
Zemmour is doing very well in the opinion polls, which may or may not mean anything. (Opinion polls in September aren't always good indicators of electoral performance -- the election is in April.)

Macron still does moderately well in the opinion polls and he's expected to win the election.

It's not really clear who the candidate for Les Républicains (more traditional right) will be. It's probably going to be Xavier Bertrand. I don't see what the point of Xavier Bertrand is. It doesn't look like he differs from Macron in any way.

The left-wing candidates are particularly disappointing. We got Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot (Greens), Anne Hidalgo (socialists). All of these have disappointing scores so far. None of these three is a good candidate: Mélenchon's too divisive. Jadot lacks the necessary charisma (and is widely hated in his own party), Hidalgo has a poor reputation (it's not deserved, she's pretty okay as mayor of Paris, but still) and carries the nasty baggage attached to the socialists.
The real surprise is how tiny the left-wing vote is. It seems like the whole political spectrum has taken a dramatic right-wing shift.

French voters are moslty interested in winding the clock back to 1960 (or perhaps 1940) and have absolutely no interest in anything except talking about how evil the Muslims are. And women. It's really weird. Has the whole country gone through a real bad divorce or something?
That said, the left has been constantly embarassing for the past five years. A whole lot of vicious bickering, but no new ideas. Strike that, no ideas, period. They're mostly interested in internal bickering between the People Front of Judea and Judea's People Front (splitters!)

Perhaps the one good news is Zemmour. I mean, I don't particularly enjoy the far-right polling this high, but I'm sure going to enjoy fascists tearing each other apart.

[MacAnDàil]

Xavier Bertrand does not seem to want to work with his former party, the Republicans, despite polls often assuming that the (only?) centre-right candidate will be him or a Republican or Pécresse. He may well get the support of minor parties, like the Centrists, or found a new party or both. He is proposing more regionalisation for example. One positive point about Mélenchon's new site is the ability to compare his programme to that of others: https://melenchon2022.fr/programme/comparateur/ so you can see that there.

The French left has already been as low as this in surveys in 2016: https://www.msn.com/fr-fr/actualite/oth ... d=msedgntp And I get the impression that, ever since the polls underestimated the far right in 2002, they've been overestimating a bit.

One of the ideas proposed on the left (doubling teacher salaries, by Hidalgo) was rubbished by Mélenchon.

At the moment, it seems there might be 8 or 9 candidates above 5%. Macron might well come first in the first round with 17%, and then win the second round against anybody. As long as the second round isn't Le Pen v Zemmour. That would be awful.

[Ares Land]

The French left has already been as low as this in surveys in 2016: https://www.msn.com/fr-fr/actualite/oth ... d=msedgntp And I get the impression that, ever since the polls underestimated the far right in 2002, they've been overestimating a bit.

They've been overestimating the far-right a bit ever since -- Le Pen didn't do as well as expected in 2017.
I think the left-wing is underestimated, for one reason or another. The left is in the minority right now; but the polls really seem incoherent with the European or regional election results.

One of the ideas proposed on the left (doubling teacher salaries, by Hidalgo) was rubbished by Mélenchon.

Typical. And that's why we can't get any new idea: anytime someone on the left suggests anything new, two rivals will pounce on him and explain it's stupid.
In that case, of course phrasing this as 'doubling the salaries' wasn't unfortunate... but it's not very far off the mark. We have, for instance, a shortage of math teacher. It's not surprising. I work in IT and I know for a fact that any math graduate can find a much higher paying job in software development.

At the moment, it seems there might be 8 or 9 candidates above 5%. Macron might well come first in the first round with 17%, and then win the second round against anybody. As long as the second round isn't Le Pen v Zemmour. That would be awful.

Nah, Le Pen vs Zemmour won't happen. Hopefully.

[Nachtswalbe]

A justification for why the PAP is truly pluralist, more so than any one-person-one-vote many-party system:
https://twitter.com/Aaaaaaaaah_nice/sta ... 6765036544

I wonder why no mainstream op-ed type has argued for the US to become a PRI/PAP style technocratic/"non-ideological" dominant party state that seeks to get rid of backwards traditions like what Ataturk/LKY/Plutarco Calles tried to do?

[Travis B.]

I wonder why no mainstream op-ed type has argued for the US to become a PRI/PAP style technocratic/"non-ideological" dominant party state that seeks to get rid of backwards traditions like what Ataturk/LKY/Plutarco Calles tried to do?

The problem with seeking a "technocratic"/"non-ideological" state is that reality is not neutral - there is no way to be truly non-ideological, because anything put forward as "non-ideological" contains baked-in assumptions that are, indeed, ideological.

[Nachtswalbe]

The problem with seeking a "technocratic"/"non-ideological" state is that reality is not neutral - there is no way to be truly non-ideological, because anything put forward as "non-ideological" contains baked-in assumptions that are, indeed, ideological.

What does the PAP see its ideology as? Center right/laissez faire/secular in theory, frequently described as technocratic by outsiders.

Proponents may describe the system as non-ideological in its decisions:

mandatory voting and PAP's non-ideological approach to policymaking where the focus is outcomes not ideology to foster an inclusive society.Some Western countries like the US, may be pluralistic democracies but they tend to embrace anti-pluralism politics…
Aaaaaaaaah
@Aaaaaaaaah_nice
The survey results completely contradict the negative sentiments frequently displayed by local critics on social media, where they often magnify the flaws disproportionately and being awfully ungrateful of all the effort the Government of Singapore has put in to keep SG great. Clapping hands sign

EDIT:Looks like I have found the local equivalent of wumao, fascinating

[Travis B.]

The problem with seeking a "technocratic"/"non-ideological" state is that reality is not neutral - there is no way to be truly non-ideological, because anything put forward as "non-ideological" contains baked-in assumptions that are, indeed, ideological.

What does the PAP see its ideology as? Center right/laissez faire/secular in theory, frequently described as technocratic by outsiders.

Thing is, that still is an ideology.

[Raphael]

In Germany, the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP have agreed on a traffic light coalition agreement. That is, their leaders have - the agreement still needs to be ratified by the respective parties. If that happens, the plan is for SPD leader Olaf Scholz to become Chancellor in the week of December 6th.

[Raphael]

The coalition agreement has now been approved almost unanimously by an SPD special convention.

[doctor shark]

Still no government here in the Netherlands, and it's been almost nine months since the election, a record for government formation by Dutch standards (and, in fact, we've gone almost the entirety of 2021 without a proper government!).

[Raphael]

How long until the Netherlands catch up to the Belgian record? Or has that already happened?

[doctor shark]

Belgium went 589 days without an elected government in the wake of the 2010 election, so... we have a bit to go, but we are coming up on a year without a formal government. So just about seven or eight more months?

[MacAnDàil]

How are things advancing currently? Last thing I saw, they were considering putting back into power the same coalition as last time, but slightly different proportions.

As for France, Zemmour has confirmed his candidacy and the candidate for the Republicans is Valérie Pécresse. I think Xavier Bertrand messed up rejoining the Republicans: he seems more popular among the general public than among the members of his party. Bertrand had a fair chance of winning, with good poll results when he had initially put himself forward as an independent right-wing candidate. His candidacy seems similar to that of Alain Juppé, who had been favourite to win for the Republicans in 2016, but Juppé didn't get the Republican candidacy. Juppé was likewise a somewhat centrist (compared to other Republicans) who was more popular among the general population than among the Republicans.

[Raphael]

The coalition agreement has now been approved almost unanimously by an SPD special convention.

Today, an FDP special convention followed suit, with a relatively less unanimous but still quite impressive 92.2 percent. Now what's left is the result of the Greens' whole membership vote, which will be announced on Monday.

[doctor shark]

How are things advancing currently? Last thing I saw, they were considering putting back into power the same coalition as last time, but slightly different proportions.

My expert inside Dutch sources say that this is also the most likely outcome (VVD-D66-CDA-CU, with each getting 8, 6, 4, and 2 cabinet positions, respectively), and it appears also as though now it's gone into the "who gets what" phase, but negotiations are still ongoing and unlikely to be done by the end of the year.

As for France, Zemmour has confirmed his candidacy and the candidate for the Republicans is Valérie Pécresse. I think Xavier Bertrand messed up rejoining the Republicans: he seems more popular among the general public than among the members of his party. Bertrand had a fair chance of winning, with good poll results when he had initially put himself forward as an independent right-wing candidate. His candidacy seems similar to that of Alain Juppé, who had been favourite to win for the Republicans in 2016, but Juppé didn't get the Republican candidacy. Juppé was likewise a somewhat centrist (compared to other Republicans) who was more popular among the general population than among the Republicans.

I saw the ooze on both sides, so this could be quite an interesting election (as always). Macron's popularity appears to not be competitive with Ebola yet due to not completely botching the pandemic response, but there's a lot of time until April and a lot of chances for gaffes and missteps. And it seems like (to me) Zemmour's mostly trying to draw attention/votes from Le Pen and Pécresse (and some other minor players).

Already looks like a crazy field of people who've announced their candidacy (in terms of numbers!)...

[Raphael]

The coalition agreement has now been approved almost unanimously by an SPD special convention.

Today, an FDP special convention followed suit, with a relatively less unanimous but still quite impressive 92.2 percent. Now what's left is the result of the Greens' whole membership vote, which will be announced on Monday.

And in the Greens' whole membership vote, 86 percent of those members who cast valid votes voted with "yes". Scholz is now scheduled to be formally elected and sworn in on Wednesday.