I think it's time to unreunite Germany.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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What was that line from WWZ again?
And people ask me why I would live in Cologne (Köln) if I had to live anywhere else.
I guess I'm moving to Köln
Please note that in Germany you get 2 votes in the federal election. 1st is for a candidate to directly represent your district, 2nd is for a party nation wide. The map only shows the election result for the 2nd vote.
Here's another map to show the party affiliation of winners of the 1st vote:
Colors are the same, except blue. Blue represents CSU, essentially the Bavarian version of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union).
For anyone interested in psephology or electoral systems, the system Germany uses is called Mixed-Member Proportional. It mixes the benefits of FPTP (having a local member who is your local area's most liked candidate) with proportional systems (having the overall Bundestag proportionally representing the will of the people).
The system is pretty neat, but it does come with some issues. See all those dark blue districts in Bavaria? That's way more seats for the CSU than they would be entitled to by the proportional representation.
Previously, these "overhanging mandates" were handled by simply increasing the size is Parliament until proportionality is met ("compensate mandates"). This was fine for decades, where there were always only a couple of those. But as CSU votership dropped (among other things), we were looking at more than 200 additional MEPs (in a parliament of officially 598 seats).
So it got reformed. Parliament now has a fixed 630 seats. The "overhanging mandates" get dropped based on the margin by which they won their electoral district (with some sorting by state mixed in). Most of those districts still got their representative via the party lists, but there actually are 4 districts that are unrepresented now. So it's not a perfect system either.
The way overhangs are handled is one of the key differences between Germany and New Zealand, as I understand it. New Zealand makes no effort to level its parliament, and simply accepts overhangs as a distortion of the pure proportionality. I like the simplicity of it, but for fairness I think Germany's system is probably better. The new system is almost like the inverse of how I suggested party seats should work, which I quite like.
One thing I don't particularly like is the 5% minimum both countries use. It's not unreasonable to have a minimum I think, but it's unfortunate for all the voters whose vote is essentially wasted because they didn't support a popular enough party. It's a less severe version of the problem FPTP has, IMO. Over 13% of voters had their vote completely wasted in last weekend's election. It'd be nice if there was, like, a preferential system, where if your first choice of party doesn't get 5%, it can go to another party of your choice instead. BSW voters, for example, might have chosen to give their vote to Linke, and FDP voters to Union. So the end result would have been:
- Union: 207
- AfD: 131
- SDP: 103 or 104 (depending on rounding)
- Grune: 73
- Linke: 86 or 87
- SSW: 1
- Plus more to whichever of those parties the 28 seats' worth of "other" voters gave their 2nd preference to
I've also often been curious how it would work if the local seats were elected not by FPTP but by IRV. Would that have a positive or negative effect on the representation, or not really have much effect at all? I don't think any place has done it, and I don't even know if anyone has seriously sat down and theory-crafted it.
This sort of ranked choice voting would be a pretty good solution to the issues with the 5% barrier.
It would also empower small parties like Volt or ÖDP, especially in terms of party funding (which is tied to election results).
Although tbh, BSW (which are openly pro Russia, so their ranked choice might have been AfD) and FDP (whose understanding of their oft-touted economy is on the level of a second semester econ major with a trustfund) not making it into Parliament this time is the best thing about these otherwise pretty terrible eleven results.
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(8 replies)
I’m shocked AFD is eastern
I'm not. Populism thrives when people are dissatisfied and angry. East Germany is economically not as strong as the west, despite decades of reunion.
Sounds like it’s following in America’s footsteps, where rural and rust belt regions were kinda left behind by the federal government. The south is more complex but similar.
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Soviet brain damage lingers on.
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Sad to see 1/3 of german voted for nazi in both local and federal vote.
20% is 1/5. It is still too much but not the end. 80% did not vote for them. And the left go stronger too and keeps growing. This is the beginn of the fight, not the end.
Edit: I take it back. FUCK THE CDU!
Get vicious with nazis early on, if you are truly sure they're nazis. Don't want Germany becoming the next Nazi America.
We are on it. There are several efforts, including high-profile ones, to ban the AfD. At the same time, we are fighting fascism on all fronts, online and offline.
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(11 replies)
"The planet is fine - the people are fucked." George Carlin
There’s the 1/5 AfD and 1/4 Union. Maybe the westies start to take the socio economic discrepancies between them and their eastern counterparts serious.
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