European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 574

As I'm seeing rather frequent updates about the french personal developments (and I consider them to be probably the most interesting part of this thread), I thought I could also chime in with some German updates.

There are actually two big political events next year in Germany on a national scale. One is the well known General election, so new Bundestag will be elected, and this also leads to a new (or reelected) chancellor.
But before that, a new President has to be chosen.
And for both positions there are a lot of rumors, discussions and media trial balloons going around.

Let's start with the President. I spoiler some general description for those not familiar with the German President, as it gets way less coverage than our chancellor.
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The Bundesversammlung has 1260 seats, and currently they are distributed as follows:
CDU/CSU 542–543 (conservative)
SPD 386–388 (social democrat)
Grüne 145–146 (Greens)
Die Linke 94 (left)
AfD 35 (right populist)
FDP 33 (liberal)
Piraten 12 (pirate party, wild mix of open democracy, free internet and similar stuff)
Freie Wähler 10 (a lose connection of not party affiliated)
SSW 1 (danish minority party)
To become president you need a majority of the votes (631), if all candidates fail the election is repeated. If it fails again, a third round happens and whoever gets most votes wins.
Current president Gauck was elected by a broad majority across all major parties. And his favorability ratings are insanely high. This is a rather high bar to pass.
So there were several ideas how the president could be elected:
1) Another candidate with broad shared support. There are multiple reasons for this.
a) in a time of social tensions and a rising AfD the other parties don't wan't to fight each other too much and with the President being a representative figure he should have a uniting touch. Also the president has to be unpartisan anyway.
b) the General elections coming up later this year. Basically it is not worth fighting over the president and burning political capital on the presidential election, with the politically way more General election coming soon after.
But the problem is: All the names floating around already said they would not be available. There is simply nobody willing to do the job, who would be broadly accepted.
2) a red-red-green candidate.
Now this was argued for some time, but here we can look at 1b). This idea has been buried for now, as the parties don't want to commit to a red-red-green alliance, something which has never been tried on federal level. This would be considered a strong sign towards the General elections, but the SPD does not want to be tied to the Linke, and the Greens want to keep their options with the CDU open. And the Linke are afraid for their more extreme wings abandoning them. Their were some names dropped, but in the end nothing came from it.
3) and CDU/green candidate
This idea floated around too, but was buried even faster. Again, neither party wants to commit here, and both want to leave their coalition options open for the General election. Also there seemed to be no candidate both parties could agree on.
4) a CDU candidate
If the rest can not agree on a candidate, the CDU could try to simply push their own candidate through in the 3rd round. The problem again is... There seems to be no candidate. Two names were dropped. The more frequent one was Norbert Lammert, president of the Bundestag. But he already publicly stated that he wont be available and will retire. The second name, but more well known outside Germany, is Wolfgang Schäuble. But with him there are several issues. First of all, he is too old. He is only 1 year younger than Gauck, who is retiring due to age reasons. And the second issue is, that there are a lot of burned bridges left behind in Schäubles career, in- and outside of Germany, which would probably be detrimental to the position. So this option is also not really viable.

5) a CDU/SPD candidate
okay, so if you can't get a super broad cnadidate, how about the current government just pushes through a candidate. Again, there are problems. The biggest one: neither party is really willing to vote for someone strongly tied to the other party. And there is no available independent person to choose, as we noticed earlier.
So people still thought about Lammert (as mentioned before) who has a reasonable track record in working with the other parties in his current function or Franz Walter Steinmeier, current foreign minister, from the SPD. Now orginally the debate was like: "well... if one party would maybe be able to vote for the other candidate... amybe... maybe we could work together" - "yeah, but you want us to vote for your guy, not that you will vote for our guy" - "uhm... yeah"
You can assign sides as you want to this conversation. Now this conversation was shot down with Lammert refusing the job. So now it is only Steinmeier left. But... CDU can't convince themselves to vote for him right now.

6) SPD+ IDKWHO
So the latest development is, that the SPD is pushing the idea of Steinmeier, and is looking for allies. But... there are none. The SPD is going with the idea: "we vote for a good candidate, and so far the only candidate is Steinmeier. Bring someone similarly qualified and we drop him and vote for your guy" (This statement was made only after Lammert refused the job...) Now this position is actually sensible. The problem is. There are still no allies. The left are blaming Steinmeier for the Agenda2010 under Schröder and call him unelectable. The Greens now, that they alone wont provide the majority the SPD needs, so they wont commit now. (but i'm 100% sure they would ump on the train, if it brings a majority and no other candidate is in sight) The CDU doesn't want to vote for an SPD guy, but have no idea themselves... And the SPD? Well... even in the SPD there is opposition to this. Why? Well... Steinmeier is the most liked and probably also most competent SPD politician among the leading circle of the SPD. He is valued rather highly as foreign minister. Putting him as president would be considered a waste. Basically you don't put your best guy on a retirement position.


So yeah... Nobody knows what will happen. In case you know someone able to fill the position, you may email the German parties and tell them about it. I'm sure they are interested.

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General election:
Now here there are 2 topics to talk about:
a) possible coalitions
b) chancellor candidates

a)
Currently polls (who are way more accurate in Germany than elsewhere, like in the US) are as follows:
CDU/CSU 34%
SPD: 22%
Green: 12%
FDP: 6%
Left: 10%
AfD: 13%
You can be assured, that the AfD won't be part of any coalition. Also it should be noted, that you will not gt any seats, if you are below 5%. The FDP is at risk here. so them dropping out with 4.8% could effect coalition options strongly! So considering that those poll numbers will change over the years, there are about 4 possible coalitions.
1) CDU+FDP
This is an often tried coalition, and probably the dream scenario of the CDU. Now this coalition burned horribly last time it happened, but back then the FDP was mostly blamed for that, and they are much weaker now and probably learned from their mistakes. In any case, current poll numbers consider this option to be out of reach. And I don't see any event possible to change that.
2) CDU+Green
This has been tried on state level, but has never happened on federal level before. Still, bot parties signalled that they would be willing to discuss this option. It doesn't need much to give this combo a majority (FDP falling out is the easiest way), but the question is, if coalition talks would be successful. This coalition is dangerous for both parties in the longterm, as they would have to sacrifice core values to make this happen. On the other hand widening your range of possible partners is always desirable. It could be mentioned, that there has been the idea to make a CDU+Green+FDP coalition. Let's consider this an emergency extension of this coalition. But even if it has a majority... I don't see it happen on federal level right now. That would be too many compromises for each party to sell to their own voters.
3) CDU+SPD
We just continue what we are doing. Even though with much less seats than last election. I consider this the most likely outcome. This will happen, when none of the other options work out (with current polls none do) or if coalition talks among the other possibilities break down, which is also not that unlikely. In the end this is the fallback solution for both parties. And currently I think it is their only solution. Still, neither party will actively promote this idea, as they have to try to sharpen their contrast after years of closing down on each other. And there is really a lack of difference so they will spin quite a lot to find some.
4) SPD+Green+Left
Now the SPD can't argue against the CDU without proposing an alternative. So red-red-green is always talked about. There has been SPD+Green on federal level (Schröder) and SPD+Left (and Left+SPD) has been tried on state level. The difficult part here is to ingrate the Left on federal level in a working coalition. They have never been part of the government, but even amongst their own ranks people are demanding them to step up, while people also demand the other parties(mainly towards the SPD) to finally consider the left as coalition mate. But neither side wants to fully commit. Everyone just keeps saying they are open to talking about it, but there is no clear message: "THIS is the coalition we want." In the end, it will need a lot of things to happen.
First: There need to be enough votes. That isn't the case right now.
Second: The SPD needs a chancellor candidate acceptable to the Left (we talk about this in a moment).
Third: Somehow they all have to decide, that this is the time to try it. The Left has to decide they are ready to take responsibility and sacrifice some of their more radical base. The SPD has to decide to stop hugging CDU positions. And the Greens have to decide to jump into a boat with two parties who may go at each others throat when things go wrong and potentially sink it.
In the end, I believe this won't happen. I don't believe there will be the votes for it. And if there will be, the question is if all 3 parties can agree. The only thing that could potentially sweeten this deal is: It is the only option in which the chancellor is not from the CDU. So if the voters and parties are really out to prevent a CDU chancellor... maybe...

And with that... we come to our last point:
the chancellor candidates:
Here we only look at the 2 major parties, because honestly, nobody cares about the rest, they wont happen anyway.
CDU/CSU: Yeah, guess what will happen? Who will become their candidate (and most likely chancellor 2017-2021) Yeah, you guessed it, Andrea Merkel. Unless she decides she is really tired of this and starts to rage, there is no way around here. Even the CSU, who threatened for a moment to not support her gave up on that. And when you now want to interrupt with: BUT HER RATINGS ARE SO LOW. Well... yes... they are lower than they were before. They are still far above pretty much any other contender. So if she wants it, she gets it. And trust me... Everyone in the CDU hopes she does it. Because while she may seem very calm and peaceful, she has done everything to establish her power in the party. There is no other viable candidate for the CDU. There is simply no one in position to follow her. There were ideas about a CSU candidate, but nah... I doubt the CDU would allow this again to happen, and I doubt the voters would really like this idea. This would steal some AfD voters, but at the same time scare voters from the CDU away to the other central parties. So Merkel it is.
SPD: This is way more interesting to follow. Let's start with those who most likely won't be it. Steinmeier. But I said he was so popular? Yes. But he simply is not a chancellor. Also he lost to Merkel 2 terms ago. And he won't be available for the job. Also the fact that he is promoted for the President pretty much shows that he is not considered. Oh, and as mentioned, the Left hates him. So this would shut down the potential coalition. Next one... Sigmar Gabriel. Party leader, vice chancellor, party clown. No seriously... He is entirely unelectable. If he was candidate, the SPD would probably lose half of their own voters and not gain any voters elsewhere. And he knows it. If he becomes the candidate, it will be because they are giving the election as lost, concede that they won't send the chancellor anyway and want to spare more valuable personal from the defeat. So who else is there? Similar to the CDU, the SPD has a leadership profile issue. There are simply no big names on top, who really are able to bring in voters. People speculated about Olaf Scholz, mayor of Hamburg and minister during the first Merkel term. He would actually be considered a reasonably strong candidate. But... it is unlikely to see him this election. The chances to become chancellor are low, and he may be spared for 2021, when Merkel will probably not be up again. He won't burn himself losing this election. So... there has been a somehow surprising name, who seems more and more likely to actually become the candidate. Martin Schulz. Yes, the Martin Schulz from the EU. It is unexpected, because he was never connected to federal politics, but always to the EU. But looking at him in more detail, he actually makes sense.
- He is comparably well liked. (not difficult when compared to Gabriel, but whatever)
- Many say that he is gonna drop from his EU positions anyway next year
- He would be accepted by the Left and the Greens
- Nominating him would send a very strong signal. While there is a large anti-EU shift among the voters, all the parties try to grab some of those voters by going more nationalistic. But when all the parties do it, nominating a strong center-proEU candidate, with a long track record, could grab a lot of center voters feeling left alone. The antiEU crowd may be loud. But there are still a lot of believers in the EU, and Schulz would be most suited to grab those votes with his track record. It requires some bravery to go against the loud trend. But this may work out here.

But... Schulz hasn't yet said if he is willing to candidate or not. Also Gabriel would be pushed out of party leadership to make this happen. But then again... he knows he is done for anyway. So if Schulz comes out and says yes... Expect him to run.



so, tdlr:
Next President of Germany: JOB VACANT, APPLY NOW. Steinmeier is the only candidate, but no support.
Chancellor duel: Merkel vs. Schulz
Coalition 2017-2021: CDU/CSU + SPD
Chancellor: Merkel