Comments on: German elections

By: Stewart J

Stewart J — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:48:27 +0000

Well, having just been in Berlin & Potsdam (however briefly) I did get to notice the number of election posters up – lots of the Pirate Party! In Potsdam (which is in Brandenburg) there were lots of PDS posters, with an almost equal number of SPD posters. Greens were far fewer, and in only slightly more prominence than the Pirates, but the FDP had a lots of double-sized posters of their andidate. One thing I noticed was that the SPD, CDU & FDP stuck to candidate photos, but the PDS and Greens ran more issue based items, the Greens seeming to rely more heavily on this. The Pirates poster consists of an image of the ballot paper and asks for 2nd votes (presumably because they have few or no constituency seat candidates). Unfortunately I missed th discussion at the Conference on the elections because my own presentation clashed directly with it (damn!), so I didn’t get much from the collective wisdom of the political science field, but their you go. Berlin was interesting as there also appeared to be billboard sized posters put up in dual carriage ways – and that the posters were all at an easily reachable height. If this had been Sydney they would all have been ripped down, but I saw remarkably few defaced or broken posters and most were left in place were they were (I was in Potsdam for 4 days so kept walking past the same ones each day). They were also paper-on-hardbard, not plastic as in Australia, so maybe the enviro conscious Germans have a lead on the Aussies?!?

Currently here in England they are discussing the “Conference Season” and the LDP Conference just started. The big deal is cutting GBP50m from the budget, but what they pick seems like easy stuff. Reminds me of the early days of the Hawke Govt, with mostly easy stuff being done.

By: Martin Wilke

Martin Wilke — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:27:36 +0000

@Stewart J,

yes, the size of the parliament can vary from election to election. In Thuringia there is no upper limit for the number of seats.

However in Saxony there is an upper limit – and it was applied this time. The number compensatory seats may not be greater than the number of overhang seats. For this reason the SPD in Saxony got only 14 seats instead of 15.

By: Charles in Germany

Charles in Germany — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:25:09 +0000

I’ve found out the answer to my own question:

http://www.thueringen.de/tlten/bodies_of_the_state_parliament/

And my German source tells me the speaker can also vote. This would be relelvant if the SDP and Die Linke form a coalition (without the Greens) in Thuringia as they would only have a majority of 1 by my calculations.

By: Charles in Germany

Charles in Germany — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:32:25 +0000

So does anyone know if the party(ies) that form government here have to choose the equivalent of a Speaker from their number?

By: Stewart J

Stewart J — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:52:40 +0000

Martin – interestingly, this means that the parliament can be bigger or smaller from election to election, so there is no actual fixed upper limit on seats (one would assume the lower limit is the actual proportionality).

By: Martin Wilke

Martin Wilke — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:42:11 +0000

Charles wrote: “Politicians are elected by a complex amalgamation of 1st past-the-post and proportional representation (I’m told), whereby if a party gets 5% of the vote they automatically are entitled to at least 6 seats.”

No, a party does not automatically get 6 seats if they get over 5 %. With 5 % they might get es few as 4 seats out of 88 (0.05 * 88 = 4,4).

Actually the system is not that comlicated. Each voter has two votes. One for the single member district and one country-wide closed party list. In each of the 44 single member districts the candidate with the highest number of votes wins (first past the post). But the total number of seats for a party depends on their list votes. Seats are distributes among parties with a list vote of more than 5 %. Smaller parties are ignored. For the distribution of list votes the highest remainder method (Hare/Niemeyer) is used.

If a party wins more districts than they would win seats according to their share of list votes, they keep those seats won in the districts (overhang seats) but the other parties get compensatory seats so that the relation of seat shares corresponds to the vote shares.

By: Charles in Germany

Charles in Germany — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:32:52 +0000

looks like a CDU-SPD coalition is on the cards in Thüringia:

http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20090903-21677.html

By: Charles in Germany

Charles in Germany — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:49:09 +0000

I’ve just seen the first Pirate Party campaign posters put up here today. I wonder how much they’ll end up eating into the Green vote…

By: Stewart J

Stewart J — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:31:47 +0000

Thanks Charles – there’s also the voting figures on http://www.election.de/cgi-bin/news1.pl – if you click on the various links it takes you through to votes in both the direct seats and the list seats. I see the Pirate Party got 1.9% in Sachsen!

By: Charles in Germany

Charles in Germany — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:55:58 +0000

Nearly all booths are reporting now and the Greens are comfortable on 6.2% which should deliver them 6 seats in the Thuringen parliament. Die Linke and the SPD together have 45 seats if they wanted to form a coalition in the 88 seat house – a majority of 1 (though I’m not sure if one of those needs to be a speaker or not). The CDU and the SPD could also form a coalition, but how desirable either party finds that idea remains to be seen. Resutls here:

http://www.wahlen.thueringen.de/wahlseite.asp

In the 51 seat Saarland parliament preliminary results have CDU 19 seats, SPD 13, Linke 11, FDP 5 and Greens 3.

In Sachsen (Saxony) of the 120 seats the CDU are projected to get 53, Die Linke 27, SPD 13, NDP 7, FDP 13, and the Greens 7.