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On May 27 2019 21:39 opisska wrote:A fun story from Czech EP election: A satirical party, named, in literal translation "Yes, we will troll the europarliament" (actually using a Czech neologism for trolling!) has won 1.56 %. Their whole program was a bunch of funny nonsensical statements and the only reason they got so many votes is because the leading party is called "YES 2011" and apparently enough people are sufficiently stupid to mess this up. The party gets some 40kEUR for their efforts too, a pretty good trolling if you ask me 
Haha, our joke partly constantly campaigns with immortality and free beer.
They also had a program to stop young adults leaving the country to earn more abroad. They planned to solve this problem by lowering the salaries in other countries.
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This is freaking hilarious, like a scene out of a movie. For the past 10-15min, all there is on TV is the PSD leader's car on its way to the police station with a bunch of journalist cars tailing him and random pedestrians showing Dragnea's car the middle finger every 20 meters.
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On May 27 2019 22:32 Volband wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2019 21:39 opisska wrote:A fun story from Czech EP election: A satirical party, named, in literal translation "Yes, we will troll the europarliament" (actually using a Czech neologism for trolling!) has won 1.56 %. Their whole program was a bunch of funny nonsensical statements and the only reason they got so many votes is because the leading party is called "YES 2011" and apparently enough people are sufficiently stupid to mess this up. The party gets some 40kEUR for their efforts too, a pretty good trolling if you ask me They planned to solve this problem by lowering the salaries in other countries.
That's hilarious.
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I don't know what to think about that. We have a "satirical" party here too, called "Die PARTEI" (The PARTY (without the meaning of festivity in it that the word has in english, in german it really only means political party)). And sure, a lot of their election ads were pretty funny. They are having 3 seats in the EU parliament.
On the one hand, votes for such a party clearly show that you are not happy with the system, and work as basically a "none of the above". On the other hand, they don't really do anything to confront any of the problems that people have, and basically just leave empty spots in parliament. I think that those parties are basically a trap for younger voters, who think it is funny to vote for them, but basically waste their vote this way, and miss their chance of having higher representation in government, which is already dominated by the seniors.
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Official results for Poland are something like shown below (turnout 45,68%):
PiS - 45,38 proc.
KE - 38,47 proc.
Wiosna - 6,06 proc.
Konfederacja - 4,55 proc. (this means that far right did not make the cut like exit polls sugested)
Kukiz'15 - 3,69 proc.
Lewica Razem - 1,24 proc.
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On May 21 2019 02:15 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2019 01:54 sharkie wrote:On May 21 2019 00:26 Big J wrote:On May 20 2019 23:22 sharkie wrote:
Kur has the problem that if he pisses the FPÖ off too much now that SPÖ and FPÖ will unite in the parlament to get rid of him The SPÖ is ready to support him for the intermediate period if he replaces the FPÖ security ministers with independet experts. If he goes through with removing Kickl and all the FPÖ ministers step down as a reaction this is going to be a likely scenario. Given that Kickl is provoking his release from duty, Kurz won't even have it in his hands. It is said that the FPÖ ministers have already informed the ministries that they are leaving. The conservatives are trying to play for time at the moment. It seems like they are postponing the emergency parliamentary meeting, that the social-democrats have called for, to monday. So for 2 less months of Kikl they are ready to endure years and years of Kurz? Man no wonder the SPO has lost almost all elections. This is the perfect opportunity to get rid of Kurz for all time So let's play this scenario through: Step 1: The SPÖ does not seek a compromise in the next days and wants to support a vote of no confidence and the FPÖ does so as well. Step 2: I am not certain, but since this goes against the chancellor I believe the whole government has to step down. Step 3: President Van der Bellen has to seek a new chancellor, that won't run into a vote of no confidence until September. Step 4: Kurz will run again. Question 1: Does this increase the chances to win the election for the SPÖ? Question 2: Will it be in the interest of the state? I don't see this being advantageous for the SPÖ or the state in general. Update: All FPÖ ministers will step down. Hofer/Kickl may support a vote of no confidence against the chancellor. Update: In contrast to what she said yesterday, that she wants the defense minister, interior minister and infrastructure minister to step down and be replaced with experts, the head of the social-democrats Pamela Rendi-Wagner has declared she wants a pure expert government. So it seems like they support a vote of no confidence at the moment.
Seems like I understand Austrian politics better than Big J, hehe.
No worries, happy to help you when you need to understand something 
Update: Austrian chancellor Kurz and his whole government are forced to go
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On May 27 2019 22:55 Simberto wrote:
I don't know what to think about that. We have a "satirical" party here too, called "Die PARTEI" (The PARTY (without the meaning of festivity in it that the word has in english, in german it really only means political party)). And sure, a lot of their election ads were pretty funny. They are having 3 seats in the EU parliament.
On the one hand, votes for such a party clearly show that you are not happy with the system, and work as basically a "none of the above". On the other hand, they don't really do anything to confront any of the problems that people have, and basically just leave empty spots in parliament. I think that those parties are basically a trap for younger voters, who think it is funny to vote for them, but basically waste their vote this way, and miss their chance of having higher representation in government, which is already dominated by the seniors.
On important topics they actually vote left/green. I don't disagree with your general statement but they are not truely empty spots in the parliament.
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On May 27 2019 23:39 sharkie wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2019 02:15 Big J wrote:On May 21 2019 01:54 sharkie wrote:On May 21 2019 00:26 Big J wrote:On May 20 2019 23:22 sharkie wrote:
Kur has the problem that if he pisses the FPÖ off too much now that SPÖ and FPÖ will unite in the parlament to get rid of him The SPÖ is ready to support him for the intermediate period if he replaces the FPÖ security ministers with independet experts. If he goes through with removing Kickl and all the FPÖ ministers step down as a reaction this is going to be a likely scenario. Given that Kickl is provoking his release from duty, Kurz won't even have it in his hands. It is said that the FPÖ ministers have already informed the ministries that they are leaving. The conservatives are trying to play for time at the moment. It seems like they are postponing the emergency parliamentary meeting, that the social-democrats have called for, to monday. So for 2 less months of Kikl they are ready to endure years and years of Kurz? Man no wonder the SPO has lost almost all elections. This is the perfect opportunity to get rid of Kurz for all time So let's play this scenario through: Step 1: The SPÖ does not seek a compromise in the next days and wants to support a vote of no confidence and the FPÖ does so as well. Step 2: I am not certain, but since this goes against the chancellor I believe the whole government has to step down. Step 3: President Van der Bellen has to seek a new chancellor, that won't run into a vote of no confidence until September. Step 4: Kurz will run again. Question 1: Does this increase the chances to win the election for the SPÖ? Question 2: Will it be in the interest of the state? I don't see this being advantageous for the SPÖ or the state in general. Update: All FPÖ ministers will step down. Hofer/Kickl may support a vote of no confidence against the chancellor. Update: In contrast to what she said yesterday, that she wants the defense minister, interior minister and infrastructure minister to step down and be replaced with experts, the head of the social-democrats Pamela Rendi-Wagner has declared she wants a pure expert government. So it seems like they support a vote of no confidence at the moment. Seems like I understand Austrian politics better than Big J, hehe. No worries, happy to help you when you need to understand something Update: Austrian chancellor Kurz and his whole government are forced to go
Yeah, I made the common mistake to believe a social-democrat. In this case when on Sunday two weeks ago Miss Rendi-Wagner announced that her demand was for said three FPOE ministers to step down.
Anyways, I still believe this is going to end up as a catastrophe for the SPOE in the elections.
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It's kind of weird. Social democrats are imploding due to really bad decisions in Germany too. Here, they don't set topics, they don't fight for stuff that would clearly be in the social democrat agenda, they fight for weird things that not a lot of people care about, and no matter what happens, they cave to the conservatives demands on anything. The few things they manage to actually do (like trying to limit rent prices), they let conservatives sabotage in a way that they don't do anything at all. On a european level, we had the whole copyright law fiasco, where the SPD always said that they were against it, but whenever one of them could vote for it and it mattered, they still voted for it. And clearly, they are getting punished for this shit. But they just keep on going, apparently trying to lose as many votes as possible as quickly as possible. I think at least the last three major elections here were "a historical debacle" for the SPD.
I wonder what the reason for this common and constant path of self-destruction among social democrats is. It seems quite obvious that if they continue on this path, they will be a minor party, or no party at all, within a pretty small timeframe.
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On May 28 2019 01:24 Simberto wrote:
It's kind of weird. Social democrats are imploding due to really bad decisions in Germany too. Here, they don't set topics, they don't fight for stuff that would clearly be in the social democrat agenda, they fight for weird things that not a lot of people care about, and no matter what happens, they cave to the conservatives demands on anything. The few things they manage to actually do (like trying to limit rent prices), they let conservatives sabotage in a way that they don't do anything at all. On a european level, we had the whole copyright law fiasco, where the SPD always said that they were against it, but whenever one of them could vote for it and it mattered, they still voted for it. And clearly, they are getting punished for this shit. But they just keep on going, apparently trying to lose as many votes as possible as quickly as possible. I think at least the last three major elections here were "a historical debacle" for the SPD.
I wonder what the reason for this common and constant path of self-destruction among social democrats is. It seems quite obvious that if they continue on this path, they will be a minor party, or no party at all, within a pretty small timeframe.
The Wealth to National Income ratio over time
![[image loading]](https://voxeu.org/sites/default/files/image/FromApr2012/piketty%20fig2%2026%20sep(1).png)
With the rather strict increase of this graph from 1950 to 2010 in mind, if you have a taxation model that is strictly linked to National Income (e.g. Income Taxes, VAT,) it will become increasingly more expensive for your state to finance everything linked to capital prices through this. That means you don't really have the money for: infrastructure, social housing, new schools, shares and other capital that social security agencies buy on capital markets etc.
Now you have 2 sustainable options:
1) stop doing these things: privatize schools, sell streets and railways etc.
2) tax wealth to buy the things bound to wealth prices
and 3 non-sustainable options:
3) increase your existing taxes (can't do this forever)
4) go (deeper) into debt (there are tricks that you can do to do this at least for a very long time, like decrease your credit rates through central bank policy, but it is hardly sustainable forever)
5) Cut your other expenses that are bound to National Income, like social policies, state wages, don't replace policemen and teachers, (can't do this forever, at some point you have cut everything - besides that people don't like that, because that's what they pay their taxes for)
2) is a no-go with most social-democrats, or seen as of minor importance. Now good luck doing social-democratic policies. Either you do something that is not sustainable, or you do something that is not social-democratic. Pick your poison if you don't have a wealth taxation.
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Yeah, that is a big point, and i totally agree with it.
However, a lot of the recent fails of the german social democrats are not based on stuff that would cost money. (The stuff from the 90s and early 00s is, but that is not the only reason they are in complete free fall now. We are talking about stuff like regulating rent markets in general, and specifically in major cities to make sure that living in a rented apartment is still possible, not doing really shitty copyright reforms (and maybe even doing good ones?), not going into a coalition with the conservatives without getting basically anything from your agenda, not letting the automobile industry get away with the whole diesel bullshit without any recompensation, doing something about climate change that is actually relevant. Things like that.
None of those would really cost money to do well, and still none of those were something the SPD did, despite theoretically being half of our government currently. Honestly, i do not think that i can think of a single thing the CDU/CSU/SPD coalition did that is not basically on the CDU/CSU agenda beyond maybe token gestures that didn't really do anything. And if you have been governing for 6 years concurrently, that is a really bad result. It basically means that the social democrats in Germany are incapable of achieving anything, while giving their votes to the conservatives for anything that those want to achieve.
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On May 27 2019 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2019 04:03 Simberto wrote:On May 27 2019 03:47 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 27 2019 03:42 Simberto wrote: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. 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. 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? 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. 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? Don't know if you are still reading this thread but it literally took me 2 minutes to walk to my local church turned polling station, then less than a minute to tell them my address and name, take the polling slip, walk to the cubicle, read it, put a cross on the box, fold it up, hand it to the person who inserted it in the box, and then another 2 minutes to walk home. There was no queue.
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On May 28 2019 03:48 Simberto wrote:
Yeah, that is a big point, and i totally agree with it.
However, a lot of the recent fails of the german social democrats are not based on stuff that would cost money. (The stuff from the 90s and early 00s is, but that is not the only reason they are in complete free fall now. We are talking about stuff like regulating rent markets in general, and specifically in major cities to make sure that living in a rented apartment is still possible, not doing really shitty copyright reforms (and maybe even doing good ones?), not going into a coalition with the conservatives without getting basically anything from your agenda, not letting the automobile industry get away with the whole diesel bullshit without any recompensation, doing something about climate change that is actually relevant. Things like that.
None of those would really cost money to do well, and still none of those were something the SPD did, despite theoretically being half of our government currently. Honestly, i do not think that i can think of a single thing the CDU/CSU/SPD coalition did that is not basically on the CDU/CSU agenda beyond maybe token gestures that didn't really do anything. And if you have been governing for 6 years concurrently, that is a really bad result. It basically means that the social democrats in Germany are incapable of achieving anything, while giving their votes to the conservatives for anything that those want to achieve.
Is it just the social democrats though? The hard left lost pretty badly this election as well. The only leftist parties doing well at the moment are the greens. The social democrats in Spain(and Portugal I think?) are really the only exception.
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On May 28 2019 04:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2019 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 27 2019 04:03 Simberto wrote:On May 27 2019 03:47 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 27 2019 03:42 Simberto wrote: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. 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. 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? 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. 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? Don't know if you are still reading this thread but it literally took me 2 minutes to walk to my local church turned polling station, then less than a minute to tell them my address and name, take the polling slip, walk to the cubicle, read it, put a cross on the box, fold it up, hand it to the person who inserted it in the box, and then another 2 minutes to walk home. There was no queue.
Five minute walk for me, but rest pretty much the same here in Poland.
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The problem with the social democrats is that they don't have an electorate. Pensioners vote for conservatives, and the young won't vote for a party that is pro-coal and doesn't have a clear stance on europe, or migration or anything because t hey're constantly dancing around between positions.
The old labour left is exactly like this, but even worse. see the labour losses yesterday towards the lib dems and greens. Same story, the young are motivated to press on issues like climate change and the EU and they're aren't going to vote for a nationalist pro-industry party. As millenials move up to become the largest demographic everywhere I've got no idea how running on an 70s social democratic platform is going to win you elections.
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On May 28 2019 04:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2019 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 27 2019 04:03 Simberto wrote:On May 27 2019 03:47 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 27 2019 03:42 Simberto wrote: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. 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. 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? 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. 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? Don't know if you are still reading this thread but it literally took me 2 minutes to walk to my local church turned polling station, then less than a minute to tell them my address and name, take the polling slip, walk to the cubicle, read it, put a cross on the box, fold it up, hand it to the person who inserted it in the box, and then another 2 minutes to walk home. There was no queue. The reason its so fucked up in the US is because 1 party actively doesn't want people to be able to vote. As a result any area they have control over will do what it can to make sure the 'wrong' people take forever and go through as much hassle as legally (and not legally) possible.
Same thing appears to have happened with Romania now where they seemed to actively try to stop foreigners from being able to vote.
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On May 28 2019 06:38 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2019 04:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On May 27 2019 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 27 2019 04:03 Simberto wrote:On May 27 2019 03:47 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 27 2019 03:42 Simberto wrote: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. 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. 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? 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. 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? Don't know if you are still reading this thread but it literally took me 2 minutes to walk to my local church turned polling station, then less than a minute to tell them my address and name, take the polling slip, walk to the cubicle, read it, put a cross on the box, fold it up, hand it to the person who inserted it in the box, and then another 2 minutes to walk home. There was no queue. The reason its so fucked up in the US is because 1 party actively doesn't want people to be able to vote. As a result any area they have control over will do what it can to make sure the 'wrong' people take forever and go through as much hassle as legally (and not legally) possible. Same thing appears to have happened with Romania now where they seemed to actively try to stop foreigners from being able to vote.
It is what happened and not for the first time, there's a fairly simple explanation for it. Elections inside and outside of the country are organized by different institutions, the central electoral bureau and the ministry of foreign affairs. The latter, being led by a cabinet member, is at any given time at the whims of the ruling party. Currently the ruling party is one that happens to usually get a pitiful amount of votes abroad, 3% this time around.
They won't be able to pull this off much longer, I'm quite certain that the 2020 legislative election will be the last one without other options of voting abroad. The main opposition parties are already campaigning on trialing vote by mail, it's almost guaranteed that they will form the next government and they are the main beneficiaries of higher turnouts.
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On May 27 2019 23:39 sharkie wrote:
Update: Austrian chancellor Kurz and his whole government are forced to go
In my opinion this was a bad move by the SPÖ as well as the FPÖ. Sundays elections proved that large parts of austria trust Kurz and his party even after the "Ibiza-Icident". Pretty sure that the FPÖ will lose some voters because of that and Kurz is going to be reelected in Sept. anyways.
In my opinion he's one of the best politicians we have right now in the EU.
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Both SPÖ und FPÖ were in a lose-lose position. I think I would have acted the same way. Doing nothing would have definitely made them lose the election in September. But forcing Kurz to go MIGHT encourage more voters to vote for them (especially SPÖ base)
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Andrea Nahles will step down as head of the German social-democratic party after her party losing 11.5% in the EU elections and placing third with 15.8% behind CDU (28.9%) and Greens (20.5%).
It is unclear who wants to take over the party and it might turn into a government crisis in Germany which is currently ruled by a CDU-SPD coalition.
The party, despite heavy critics from the youth and base organizations in 2017-2018, after yet another desastrous election (20.5%), went into a coalition with the CDU again.
Despite campaigns like #NoGroKo ("no big coalition") and #project18 ("the SPD will fall further to only 18% if they stay on track") the party elites did not want to change course.
Let's see how this goes. It seems like the SPD will either have to change somehow, or become irrelevant... or both will happen. At this point it will probably be very hard for the SPD to win over voters that have become used to voting Greens/Left regardless of what they do and the conservative-liberal voters have been very happy with Merkel's CDU for more than a decade.
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EPT
