Elections in various countries

[doctor shark]

Yesterday was the Dutch general election. Very high turnout (especially by US standards), and a mix of surprising and unsurprising results. As a reminder, the Dutch system is purely proportional: if a party manages to get 1/150 of the total vote, they get a seat in the House of Representatives. Results also are provisional at this point, but mostly finalized (though maybe ±2 seats max). Sixteen parties managed enough votes for seats, including two parties with only 1 seat each; here are some of the highlights.

• Unsurprisingly, the VVD (center-right, the party of the current PM Mark Rutte) ended up with the most seats, picking up two in the process to end up with about 35.
• The first surprise (and maybe the biggest) was second place: D66, which is more center-left, ended up picking up four seats, sitting at 23 and being the second-largest party. In the last poll before election day, they were projected to end up with 19 and in third place behind the PVV.
• Geert Wilders' PVV took third, losing three seats to drop to 17 and polling below expectations.
• CDA, the main Christian democratic party and one of the junior coalition partners, dropped four seats, ending up at 15. The other Christian democrats, CU (also in the outgoing coalition), finished unchanged at 5 seats. Both underperformed according to polling.
• Both Labor (PvdA) and the Socialists (SP) are sitting at nine seats each. No change for Labor, but a loss of five seats for the Socialists. Both of these results are lower than what the last polls suggested.
• GroenLinks (the Greens) fell from 14 seats to 8, a quite drastic fall but not too different from the polling.
• The infamous FvD, a party that somehow manages to be even more right-wing and hardline than PVV, ended up gaining six seats to finish with 8. An offshoot, JA21 (which consists of former FvD members who left due to racism and antisemitism), picked up 3 seats.

Numerically, the outgoing coalition (VVD-D66-CDA-CU) does have enough seats to continue, with 78 seats, but four-party coalitions are not particularly stable, and the final numbers could vary a bit (to allow for a stable three-party coalition). Either way, Rutte IV seems extremely likely at this point.

[Raphael]

Looks like we now know who the major German parties will have as their nominees for Chancellor in the September federal election.

On Monday, the Greens decided on Annalena Baerbock, the woman half of their two-person gender-balanced national leadership.

Over on the center-right side, things had been undecided between the leader of the CDU and PM of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, and the leader of the CSU and PM of Bavaria, Markus Söder. In the Monday/Tuesday night, at, I think, 1 AM or something like that, the Vorstand (a kind of executive committee) of the CDU announced that after long and intense debates, they had voted in favor of Laschet as nominee of the CDU/CSU alliance. A bit later, Söder withdrew his candidacy.

The once mighty but now pretty small center-left SPD had already decided a while ago that their nominee would be Federal Finance Minister and former Mayor of Hamburg Olaf Scholz, but given his party's position in the polls, few people take him seriously as a contender for the Chancellorship.

This means that Laschet is very likely to be the next Chancellor of Germany. Sigh. Note for English speakers: German "sch" is pretty much pronounced like English "sh", so his name shouldn't be as difficult to pronounce for you as you might think at first.

[MacAnDàil]

Considering that the first poll (by Forsa) after the Greens' anouncement had them on 28%, first party in Germany 7 points ahead of the Union, it's not so sure that Laschet will win.

[Raphael]

It's not certain, but keep in mind that four years ago, Martin Schulz did fairly well in some early polls after the SPD had nominated him for Chancellor, too, and that didn't work out so well for him.

[MacAnDàil]

The difference is that Schulz's announcement in 2017 was behind the only surge in SPD vote intention in the whole inter-election period (between January and June 2017). And, even during that suden surge, the SPD was never 7 points ahead of the CDU. The best they got was 1.5% ahead the Union. Also, the SPD and CDU monthly averages were never within 1% of a difference.

In contrast to this, the Greens have gained a significant proportion of the vote intention already since autumn 2018. The Greens just need to perform as well as they did in the recent Forsa survey or even just like they did in several surveys of July or August 2019 and they will win the chancellorship. And Baerbock's announcement is closer to the finishing line so, even if it is hypothetically a shortlived honeymoon, it's one that she can ride on long enough to win it.

[Ares Land]

What's your opinion of Laschet? Especially compared to Merkel? is he at the same level of competence? More conservative?

[Raphael]

Frankly, I don't know enough about Laschet to have much of an opinion about him. In the various internal CDU power struggles that he eventually won, I usually expected his various rivals to win, so I'm still a bit surprised that he ended up where he is now.

[doctor shark]

In terms of chancellor favorability polling, though, Baerbock has been fairly consistently ahead of Laschet, which probably says something. I could well see, even if the CDU/CSU comes out on top in seats, a coalition perhaps between the SPD and the Greens (à la Luxembourg) if that numerically works out. And especially considering the results in some states (eg. Baden-Württemberg), I don't think that a Greens-led government would be a particularly unusual outcome. Though considering Söder's popularity polling, I would also not be surprised if they switched Laschet for Söder closer to the election if they found their backs to the wall.

On the other hand, as was mentioned, five months is an exceptionally long time in politics. Given the current Covid-19 crisis and the glacial pace of vaccinations, a change of fortunes regarding that could lead to more favorable polling results for the CDU/CSU... or backfire.


Anyways, in the Nether Regions, no government yet, though the formation process has been... well, special, to say the least. Rutte's still the caretaker PM despite a censure vote for him lying to the House of Representatives about government formation, and numerically he probably doesn't have a majority barring a miracle (since the CU, one of his coalition partners, said they won't partner with a Rutte-led government). There is a theoretical path to a government without the VVD, but it'd be probably at least a seven-party coalition, and that would be... well, difficult, given how "well" four-party coalitions have worked.

[cedh]

Frankly, I don't know enough about Laschet to have much of an opinion about him. In the various internal CDU power struggles that he eventually won, I usually expected his various rivals to win, so I'm still a bit surprised that he ended up where he is now.

The very same thing could be said about Merkel herself before she was elected. And I think this is quite telling -- to me, Laschet is Merkel's heir in terms of style. He's good at negotiating compromise solutions and at getting former rivals to line up with him eventually. Politically he very much stands for "more of the same", maybe slightly more conservative than Merkel but not very much so. But he does not seem quite as competent and intelligent as she is, he appears to be rather easily influenced by lobbyists, and in contrast to Merkel, his opinions do not seem to be based on ethical values very much at all. And his covid-19 crisis management in North-Rhine-Westphalia has been quite erratic, to say the least. (As one example, his regional government at one point actively prohibited schools from installing air filtering systems in their classrooms even when these devices would have been paid for by parents, alumni clubs, or local businesses, because, well, schools simply can't be affected by the pandemic at all.)

All in all, Laschet is definitely a weaker candidate than Merkel was, and probably also a weaker candidate than Söder would have been (because Söder for sure knows how to get spotlights to shine on him), but he still has a fairly good chance to become the next chancellor: He only needs to stay ahead of the Greens by a slight margin and hope that there is no majority of seats for a Green-Red-Red or Green-Red-Yellow coalition, which remains realistic because the CDU/CSU has a much larger traditional voter base and is structurally more likely to gain overhang seats than other parties.

It's not certain, but keep in mind that four years ago, Martin Schulz did fairly well in some early polls after the SPD had nominated him for Chancellor, too, and that didn't work out so well for him.

In my opinion, Schulz was a fairly strong candidate (certainly the strongest that the SPD ever had after Schröder), but he made the mistake of not playing on his strengths, especially his personal enthusiasm for Europe, because the party strategists suggested this might not please certain potential voters. Too bad that many other potential Schulz voters turned away from him when they realized they'd only get just another we-don't-know-what-we-stand-for-because-we-don't-want-to-step-on-anyone's-toes SPD campaign...

On Monday, the Greens decided on Annalena Baerbock, the woman half of their two-person gender-balanced national leadership.

I personally think she's definitely the strongest of the three candidates in terms of personality, programmatic ambition, and probably also competence. She appears to be good at organizing things, at negotiation, at presenting to the media, and she has some appeal to both left-wing and centrist voters at the same time. For comparison, her approach to politics seems to be somewhere between Joe Biden and Jacinda Ardern, both in terms of content (with a bit more of an ecological focus probably) and in terms of style. She also has the advantage that the Greens have more potential coalition options than all other parties, and that they currently appear to be the only major party with a vision of how to do things better. (And I don't just say this because I support the Greens myself.)

However, this still doesn't mean she's a clear favorite. Many voters in the center are still extremely sceptical of green policies that set any rules for the economy, and if they do turn away from the CDU/CSU, they're likely to vote for the (neo-)liberal FDP instead. If Baerbock tries to accommodate these voters, she risks losing voters on the left or green end of the spectrum -- and if she doesn't, she might not be able to gain enough votes for a left-of-center majority. In my opinion, there is a roughly 50/50 chance for either the Greens or the CDU/CSU becoming the strongest party (although the conservatives probably do have slightly better odds), but because there will most likely be four minor parties in the next Bundestag too, with roughly 8-16% of votes each, and nobody wants to form a coalition with the AfD, a lot will depend on the exact vote and seat share of these smaller parties.

[Creyeditor]

(As one example, his regional government at one point actively prohibited schools from installing air filtering systems in their classrooms even when these devices would have been paid for by parents, alumni clubs, or local businesses, because, well, schools simply can't be affected by the pandemic at all.)

This is I think a good description of the consequences, but IIRC the reasoning was a bit different. NRW was planning to buy air-filtering systems, but there were some other priorities (I can't recall if they to install them in other places first or there were some financial concerns). The problem with 'sponsored' air-filtering systems was that the sponsors only wanted to pay for the purchase and not for the maintenance. NRW would have had to pay for maintenance of the IIUC, maintenance was much more expensive in the long-term than purchase, so NRW wanted to keep control of it. I still think this was a bad decision, but I start getting tired of people misrepresenting politicians decision process on TV, especially on the designated segment on Extra3, which I really enjoy otherwise.

[cedh]

Yes, I'm sure there must have been reasons that were actually reasonable from some perspective, but my summary was how this decision came across to almost anyone not directly involved in the decision-making process, even to politically-informed people in NRW I know personally. In my opinion, if you (as a politician in charge of some important issue) make a decision that looks as absurd as this one from the outside, you should explain to the public why you're doing it, and which goals you are pursuing with that decision. And that's something the CDU/CSU has never been good at, and Laschet in particular often gives the impression he's not even interested in making an effort.

[Linguoboy]

I haven’t been paying attention to the Madrid elections but last night seems to have upended things. The Popular Party candidate felt she was such a shoo-in for re-election that she skipped the second debate entirely, clearing the way for the junior coalition partner candidate, Rocío Monasterio of Vox, to turn the proceedings into an absolute shitshow. She charged the unpopular Unidas Podemos candidate with lying about receiving death threats and told him he could leave if he didn’t like it. So he did. That only convinced her to double down, attacking the moderator for attempting to convince him to return and shouting over the remaining leftist candidates, who were able to project unity and dignity in the face of belligerence and churlishness.

Now, with only 10 days to go, a PP/Vox victory is suddenly in doubt as the leftists are working together to get previously apathetic citizens to turn their outrage into votes. It could be too little too late or it could lead to a surprise upset.

[Ares Land]

Thanks for the opinions!

An amusing anecdote: we're having regional elections in June; the Greens in Ile de France caused much outrage with a campaign poster dissing the boomers. (To the effect of 'Register to vote, because the boomers will vote")

I'm probably dead in the middle of the target demographic, because far from outraged, I thought it was a real compelling argument!

[zompist]

the Greens in Ile de France caused much outrage with a campaign poster dissing the boomers.

What are boomers in French? Les boomers? boumards? ils sont fous ces boomains?

[Ares Land]

Not very imaginatively, les boomers (and le baby boom)

There was a fun thread on Twitter a few months back trying to find alternatives to OK boomer. My favourite was Fort bien, l'ancien.

[alice]

Not very imaginatively, les boomers (and le baby boom)

There was a fun thread on Twitter a few months back trying to find alternatives to OK boomer. My favourite was Fort bien, l'ancien.

And, sadly, not les explodeurs.

[Raphael]

I'm a bit surprised that the generation as a whole even has a name in France. I would have thought people there would not speak about the generation as a whole, but only about what used to be its radical wing.

[Ares Land]

Yeah, the boomer thing really hit a nerve here! Many people know sanctimonious older folks who got comfortable pensions and bought houses when real estate was dirt cheap, so the concept carried well across the Atlantic.

[Ryusenshi]

There was a fun thread on Twitter a few months back trying to find alternatives to OK boomer. My favourite was Fort bien, l'ancien.

Interestingly, all the French alternatives rhyme, even though the original didn't.

[Vijay]

There was a fun thread on Twitter a few months back trying to find alternatives to OK boomer. My favourite was Fort bien, l'ancien.

Interestingly, all the French alternatives rhyme, even though the original didn't.

Which is what makes them that much better *whistles*