Hessen Poll After-Action

Last night, after the 8PM German nightly news.....my local Hessen public-run network (HR) ran a 25-minute last-minute scheduled special program....live....on the refugee crisis and featuring the top two political figures of the state (from the CDU and SPD Party).

Why?

Well, back on Monday, HR released a batch of polling slides related to politics and the refugee episode. It's probably the first poll they've done in three months, and after the Koln situation.

There are several shocks within the poll taken.

The AfD (the anti-immigration platform party)....has taken a 12-percent state voter situation.  Both the CDU and SPD are still up and fairly safe.

But hidden within the slides are two which tell an odd story.

First, there's this slide which addresses supporters who identified their party of support, and if they agree with the refugee crisis position that Merkel advocates.  At least a third of the voters of both parties (CDU and SPD)....don't approve of the current position. They still say they are with the two parties and NOT with AfD, but then you have to wonder....in a heated election period....would they step aside and vote AfD to send a frustration vote?

I did the calculations.  If both parties lost a third of their voters in November 2017's national election....it means that AfD would have 31-percent of the state vote, with the CDU roughly 8 points behind and the SPD nearly 12 points behind.

Second, there's another slide which addresses each issue area and which party would be the best to handle the problem.

Naturally, energy politics got brought up and almost half the population said that the Green Party would be best for that issue.

But the immigration situation was brought up and thirty-percent of the poll participants said NONE of the political parties are capable of now handling the issue. Not AfD, not SPD, and not CDU.

It basically means that almost a third of Hessens can't see the immigration and asylum episode as fixable.

My guess is that political folks met around on Monday night and discussed this matter at length.  It doesn't help CDU or SPD.  The poll will really shows a serious trend that has roughly 20 months to fix or both would suffer great negative numbers in the national election (Nov 2017).  If Hessen did get 31-percent for the AfD Party.....you'd have to anticipate the same or similar trend in other states.

So, they called up HR and had them rig up this last minute reality-news update....live and hyped.

Worried?  I'm guessing that people are now assessing the direction of voters and how this trend might seriously damage politics.  An entire generation of political figures might have to retire by 2017 and some new fresh message be drafted up to recover from an election defeat.