European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1249

On May 27 2019 03:15 TheDwf wrote:
As expected the FN won, but macronists are not that behind. Greens overperformed, the mainstream right collapsed, the FI (left) suffered a setback, the PS did better than polls announced and will have elected representatives in the end.

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1132708380760584192

On May 27 2019 03:14 Sent. wrote:
You mean the rest is anti EU or would be labelled as anti EU by the liberals?

On May 27 2019 03:24 Nyxisto wrote:
Good to see that the AfD is stuck at 12% or whatever and also pretty happy about seeing the Greens do so well. SPD continues to die rather rapidly and needs a completely new program. If the voter movement of the youth is any indication, they need a much better ecological and liberal profile.

On May 27 2019 03:37 GreenHorizons wrote:
Takes me so long just to decipher the various parties (double check the country being referenced), remember their notable quirks, and connect some personality/figure to it I have a hard time staying interested. Could someone give a ELI5 (American edition) for what happened?

So far I gather that the fear of a rightward swing among the electorate didn't manifest but I'm only like 51% sure that's what happened.

On May 27 2019 03:42 Simberto wrote:


In Germany, it didn't manifest.

There was a bit of a move from conservatives (CDU/CSU) towards hard right AfD, but the most interesting thing that happened here is that the Greens doubled in value, and the social democrats are collapsing. The total amount of rightwing didn't change relevantly.

On May 27 2019 03:47 GreenHorizons wrote:


Okay, so I think I was mostly reading that right. If I understand the nuance at all (I probably don't), folks like Big J would say that the "center-left" and "social democrat" labels aren't exactly accurate but otherwise generally see things the same way?

On May 27 2019 04:03 Simberto wrote:


I don't know where you got that from, the only post by Big J i saw on the last three pages was a short summary of the austrian EU election, and a short post where he states that he dislikes the EU conservatives.

Slightly unrelated:
I was an election helper (Is this the correct english word for the people who work at the voting stations?) for the first time in this election, and it is an experience that i can greatly recommend. You get a much better feeling of what votes actually mean if you meet 400 people who come in to vote, and then see (and count) all these ballots. 200 Votes doesn't feel like a lot in the statistics on TV, but if you actually see just how big a pile of paper those are, you get a lot more respect for them.I think it is also important to understand how the systems work at the low level.

I have a lot of newfound respect for the basic process of balloting and counting votes, and how many safeguards there are in it, and how much effort people put into making it work. We recounted over 700 votes three times, and checked and rechecked all sorts of things because the total didn't add up to the same number as the total amount of entries for people who voted.

Also, it is amazing to see just how well organized it is and how well it works on a mechanical level. In the 5.5 hours that i was at the ballot, i don't think a single person had to wait for more than 3-5 minutes.

Seriously, i think this is something that every person in a democracy should do at least once. I will definitively do it again for the next elections.

On May 27 2019 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:



Just that J also seems to the left of most (I read this thread even though I don't post often) but otherwise the description was fine.

I wonder if I could sell "This takes 5 minutes in Germany" t-shirts in the hours long lines to vote in the US?