Saturday, November 21, 2015

Berlin State Politics

As I've mentioned a couple of times.....there are five state elections (the national election isn't until the fall of 2017) for Germany in 2016.  One of those five elections is the Berlin-state election.  RBB, the regional public-run network did a review of the present numbers for Berlin residents.

There's a public dissatisfaction with the present CDU-SPD majority government which runs the Berlin state government.

Presently, the CDU is at 23-percent and the SPD is sitting around 27-percent.

The Greens have 17-percent.  The Linke Party sits at 14-percent, and the AfD Party has moved up to control 9-percent.

For the sake of the argument.....the AfD has doubled their percentage over the past year....with most support coming from the CDU.

The rest of the votes?  Going to minor parties in the area.....FDP, the Pirate Party and a host of parties that will take less than a thousand votes from any election.

It's pointed out that there are regions of Berlin where the AfD is pulling 12-percent and areas where it's down near 3-percent.  AfD is hyped up and advertised as the party that will oppose the Merkel immigration plan and standing against refugees in Germany.

There's roughly a year now between today and the next Berlin state election.  In between this time.....three other state elections will occur and there will be a fair amount of forum opportunity for AfD to appeal to more voters or the CDU to explain their strategy.

One might look at the scenarios and project out that the CDU probably won't be a major winner in the 2016 state election in Berlin.....perhaps even getting less than 20-percent of the vote.  All of this will be a blunt point for the SPD to call for early elections except nationally.....they may have a problem in explaining their policy on the refugees as well.  I could even see a scenario where the CDU loses half it's voting base to the AfD and you end up with the SPD in some leadership role but hooked up to the Linke Party and Greens to run some government, with a large segment of the public frustrated with this type of partnership.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"AfD Party has moved up to control 9-percent."

Actually that's not bad for liberal Berlin. I look for

The AFD to only increase its support as the war on Islamic

militants continues to escalate in the EU and, God forbid,

makes its way into Germany. The costs of taking care of all

these migrants will also take a toll along with the obvious

problem of having ca. one million young idle males far from

home and family.


Nice blog,

Mike

Schnitzel_Republic said...

Realistically, with a year to go....the AfD crowd in Berlin ought to be up around 18-percent by election time next year. All this does....I will point out....is significantly weaken the CDU folks and to a minor degree....the SPD. Even the SPD has disenchanted voters and if you wanted a frustration vote...this would be the way to go. The thing about AfD, when you go back to it's original purpose....it was the anti-Euro/anti-EU party. It had ONE simple thing that attracted voters. So here we are with AfD version 2.0 and they repeated the process....ONE simple purpose. Beyond anti-immigration talk, you really don't know how they will act and it should bother anyone who is contemplating the frustration vote to send a signal to Berlin. All this does is weaken the government further.