This is going to be the worst possible result in my opinion.
The former Communists could end up in power if the SPD and Greens get fed up with Merkel.
Whatever. Even Merkel herself did agitprop for the FDJ. What is it about Germany that makes it unacceptable there to have anything to do with "the former Communists"? In almost every other East European country, former Communists have had major roles in govt since 1989 but this seems to go largely unnoticed
What do you mean "whatever"?
A lot of Linke voters are elderly people in East Germany brainwashed after 40 years of Communism.
Good to see the anti-Euro people and the anti-renewables "liberal" party doing badly, but these 5% thresholds are really stupid. You go to all the trouble of making a proper proportional voting system, then cripple it on purpose. That reduces the diversity of opinion the parliament represents and brings back all the arbitrariness and tactical shenanigans that you were supposed to be getting rid of.
Hear, hear. When you have several minor parties failing to reach the threshold you start to have a real problem with the representativeness of parliament - I think one sixth of the votes this time are wasted votes. They really ought to have a look at changing the rules, either to allow seats to parties that reach 5% in individual Laender, or simply to reduce the national threshold to 2.5%.
This is going to be the worst possible result in my opinion.
The former Communists could end up in power if the SPD and Greens get fed up with Merkel.
Whatever. Even Merkel herself did agitprop for the FDJ. What is it about Germany that makes it unacceptable there to have anything to do with "the former Communists"? In almost every other East European country, former Communists have had major roles in govt since 1989 but this seems to go largely unnoticed
What do you mean "whatever"?
A lot of Linke voters are elderly people in East Germany brainwashed after 40 years of Communism.
Don't be so patronising...
Communism is in a league of its own in my opinion. Communist votes don't deserve to be respected.
Why Merkel encouraged all her supporters to vote the same way on both votes is a bit of a mystery. If just a few had voted FDP on the second vote she'd have beeen able to continue with her preferred coalition.
Yes, for the FDP to lose some small delta, sufficient to bring them below the threshold, the CDU/CSU would have to find fully 5% or 2m+ votes to make up the difference...
"'Learn English or lose your benefits': Osborne introduces tougher new jobseeker rules"
I seem to remember the PB Tories supporting that. Yet not being able to speak English isn't a crime.
Yes, I support that. Failing to learn English drastically restricts your ability to find a job. Moreover I would go further. It should be deemed to make you "unavailable for work". It should also be a precursor of being allowed to settle permanently in the UK that you have a reasonable level of English. People who wish to move to the UK should be busy learning English before they leave their homeland.
Don't be silly. When I went to live abroad, no-one checked whether I could speak the language; what mattered was whether I could do the job. What I do object to however is the way some authorities and organisations in the UK bend over backwards to accommodate the language needs of immigrants. When I was abroad, if the people I needed to speak to didn't speak English, that was my problem, not theirs.
If I'm in the City Office trying to get some kind of legally-required document and I don't speak Japanese and they don't speak English, that's a problem for both of us. If somebody gets run over in the street, and I'm trying to call an ambulance for them, but I don't share a language with the person answering the the phone, that's a problem for me and the person answering the phone, but above all it's a problem for the person who needs the ambulance.
In practice obviously everybody gets along as best they can. I learned Japanese, but until it was good enough to be useful, people would do what they could in English. Seems like common sense to me...
Why Merkel encouraged all her supporters to vote the same way on both votes is a bit of a mystery. If just a few had voted FDP on the second vote she'd have beeen able to continue with her preferred coalition.
Yes, for the FDP to lose some small delta, sufficient to bring them below the threshold, the CDU/CSU would have to find fully 5% or 2m+ votes to make up the difference...
Nuts!
I think Merkel must have assumed that the FDP would just get 5% no matter what. A massive miscalculation if true.
Good to see the anti-Euro people and the anti-renewables "liberal" party doing badly, but these 5% thresholds are really stupid. You go to all the trouble of making a proper proportional voting system, then cripple it on purpose. That reduces the diversity of opinion the parliament represents and brings back all the arbitrariness and tactical shenanigans that you were supposed to be getting rid of.
Hear, hear. When you have several minor parties failing to reach the threshold you start to have a real problem with the representativeness of parliament - I think one sixth of the votes this time are wasted votes. They really ought to have a look at changing the rules, either to allow seats to parties that reach 5% in individual Laender, or simply to reduce the national threshold to 2.5%.
I don't see why they need a threshold in the first place. Parties that get a small number of votes get a small number of MPs, until the number of votes gets so small that the number of MPs drops below 1. That's exactly what the system should be doing, with no need for arbitrary magic numbers.
"Angela Merkel's struggling coalition partner, the Free Democrats, may need help to get into parliament. But the chancellor is not in a generous mood. The reason can be found in the country's newly crowded political landscape and in recent changes to the election law."
I don't see why they need a threshold in the first place. Parties that get a small number of votes get a small number of MPs, until the number of votes gets so small that the number of MPs drops below 1. That's exactly what the system should be doing, with no need for arbitrary magic numbers.
Except, in Germany a pure PR system could deliver a seat on as low a share as 0.09% of the vote, or just 36,000 votes...
Believe me, the Germans will be embarrassed by that.
Why?
Because it's supposed to be a PR system, and it's no longer that by normative measures. Plus they've just spent 2 years wrangling to iron out a (fairly) minor kink in the old system, only to deliver something of a joke outcome instead...
It's either PR or it's not. Is it just not the *right* sort of PR because it delivers a result that some people don't like? Should it be replaced by another system that someone else won't like the results of? Where does this tinkering end?
Do electoral reform zealots have a Holy Grail of a system against which all are, unlike Sir Galahad, not worthy?
In 2010 91.5% of UK voters voted for a party which won at least one seat. In Germany that figure is now 84.3%.
Yes, but...
A Labour voter in Surrey is hardly "represented" by a Labour MP from Liverpool or Glasgow...
Neither are all Green voters UK-wide "represented" by Caroline Lucas.
By that metric MMP still outperforms (hugely) FPTP...
I just got told off by David Boothroyd on the VoteUK forum for implying that people aren't properly represented unless they're represented by the party of their choice. He told me that people are just as well represented by those they haven't voted for.
The bottom line is Merkel has to choose either the SDP or the Greens to go into coalition with. Why not try the Greens now that she's ditched nuclear power?
I just got told off by David Boothroyd on the VoteUK forum for saying that people aren't represented unless they're represented by the party of their choice. He told me that people are just as well represented by those they haven't voted for.
I'm sure Stalin said the same...
It's a philosophical/democratic question, eventually.
In NI, under STV, something like 90% are represented (i.e. have an MP) from their first choice party, and 80% have their first choice candidate as MP...
I just got told off by David Boothroyd on the VoteUK forum for saying that people aren't represented unless they're represented by the party of their choice. He told me that people are just as well represented by those they haven't voted for.
I'm sure Stalin said the same...
It's a philosophical/democratic question, eventually.
David Boothroyd is correct. The person I voted for in the last General Election didn't get in, but I still have a representative.
Where I live we have a single constituency system covering the entire country. Every party puts up a slate of 10 candidates. You get 10 votes so you could vote the slate although few do. 17 seats in the Parliament, so the bar for success is set at the candidate with 17th most votes and above.
I managed to vote for 10 candidates without having a single one of them get in. Bad luck, eh? Maybe a jinx.
You say I have no representatives. I say I have 17.
Where I live we have a single constituency system covering the entire country. Every party puts up a slate of 10 candidates. You get 10 votes so you could vote the slate although few do. 17 seats in the Parliament, so the bar for success is set at the candidate with 17th most votes and above.
I managed to vote for 10 candidates without having a single one of them get in. Bad luck, eh? Maybe a jinx.
You say I have no representatives. I say I have 17.
For example, the CDU/CSU could just have given the FDP a free run in three constituencies, sufficient to keep them above the electoral Plimsoll line, and Merkel with her majority....
Where I live we have a single constituency system covering the entire country. Every party puts up a slate of 10 candidates. You get 10 votes so you could vote the slate although few do. 17 seats in the Parliament, so the bar for success is set at the candidate with 17th most votes and above.
I managed to vote for 10 candidates without having a single one of them get in. Bad luck, eh? Maybe a jinx.
You say I have no representatives. I say I have 17.
That sounds like a way to make FPTP even more biased towards the largest party. But I suppose it might work OK if you have very weak parties and mainly vote for individuals.
Where I live we have a single constituency system covering the entire country. Every party puts up a slate of 10 candidates. You get 10 votes so you could vote the slate although few do. 17 seats in the Parliament, so the bar for success is set at the candidate with 17th most votes and above.
I managed to vote for 10 candidates without having a single one of them get in. Bad luck, eh? Maybe a jinx.
You say I have no representatives. I say I have 17.
That sounds like a way to make FPTP even more biased towards the largest party. But I suppose it might work OK if you have very weak parties and mainly vote for individuals.
It's actually a variation on the Japanese constituency system. You should know that!
'You say I have no representatives. I say I have 17.'
Well, by the same token, you would also have n= ~120 "representatives" under the purest of PR list systems, e.g. Netherlands or Israel...
Yes, I would say that I did. I would obviously approach some for assistance and not others depending on their politics etc as I do here. In the UK of course I only have the option of my local MP or a relevant minister. Here I have at least two options at the weekend family bbq.
Yes they use a form of the Limited Vote, actually used in parts of the UK between 1867-1885.
Not a bad system (for small two-party parliaments). Better than FPTP at any rate, but not reliable enough to scale up to a multi-party system...
Hmm, wikipedia describes the Limited Vote as "semi-proportional" which is a term I don't recall from the Great PR PB War threads of recent years. And previous use in the UK was unexpected for me too.
Where I live we have a single constituency system covering the entire country. Every party puts up a slate of 10 candidates. You get 10 votes so you could vote the slate although few do. 17 seats in the Parliament, so the bar for success is set at the candidate with 17th most votes and above.
I managed to vote for 10 candidates without having a single one of them get in. Bad luck, eh? Maybe a jinx.
You say I have no representatives. I say I have 17.
That sounds like a way to make FPTP even more biased towards the largest party. But I suppose it might work OK if you have very weak parties and mainly vote for individuals.
It's actually a variation on the Japanese constituency system. You should know that!
Is it? IIUC in Japan you only get a single vote in the constituency section, but the seat elects multiple members. If I'm understanding GeoffM right he gets multiple votes.
The trick about the Japanese system is that you want just enough candidates but not too many for fear of splitting the vote too much, so when a party does badly unlucky candidates will have their party's support pulled at the last minute. Ex-PM Naoto Kan got disciplined by the party he founded for stumping for one of his own MPs...
It's supposed to have 598 so I assume the extra 32 are because the CDU/CSU won more constituency seats than they're entitled to?
No, that can't be it because they couldn't have won more than 299 seats...
I'll never understand it.
Yes, under the old system "uberhang" seats might have given Merkel a (small) majority in a slightly enlarged Bundestag. [dunno, someone will work it out shortly, I guess]
But (the newly-introduced) "balance" seats will negate that, while enlarging the Bundestag still further...
5 out of six parties rammed this through in Feb 2013 [dunno who voted against], after a CDU/CSU proposed amendment was found unconstitutional (after the courts had also found the old system to be unconstitutional.) They probably liked the sound of an expanding Bundestag (more bums on seats)...
Seriously, this system is mind-bogglingly complex. Cannot be calculated mentally, or on simple paper/spreadsheet.
Is it? IIUC in Japan you only get a single vote in the constituency section, but the seat elects multiple members. If I'm understanding GeoffM right he gets multiple votes.
The trick about the Japanese system is that you want just enough candidates but not too many for fear of splitting the vote too much, so when a party does badly unlucky candidates will have their party's support pulled at the last minute. Ex-PM Naoto Kan got disciplined by the party he founded for stumping for one of his own MPs...
Yes, in principle. You have fewer votes than the seats available, meaning that (unlike the pure bloc vote, still used in some UK council elections, 3 votes in a 3-seater) no party should have a complete clean sweep in a multi-member constituency. e.g. you have 2 votes in a three-seater (UK 1867-85), or 8 votes in a 10 seater (Gibraltar?), or 1 vote in a 7 seater (Japan?)
Is it? IIUC in Japan you only get a single vote in the constituency section, but the seat elects multiple members. If I'm understanding GeoffM right he gets multiple votes.
The trick about the Japanese system is that you want just enough candidates but not too many for fear of splitting the vote too much, so when a party does badly unlucky candidates will have their party's support pulled at the last minute. Ex-PM Naoto Kan got disciplined by the party he founded for stumping for one of his own MPs...
Yes, in principle. You have fewer votes than the seats available, meaning that (unlike the pure bloc vote, still used in some UK council elections, 3 votes in a 3-seater) no party should have a complete clean sweep in a multi-member constituency. e.g. you have 2 votes in a three-seater (UK 1867-85), or 8 votes in a 10 seater (Gibraltar?), or 1 vote in a 7 seater (Japan?)
I think a system with 1 vote is different to a system with many, but that's just semantics and I see what you're getting at.
I guess assuming strong partisan alignment in most cases you start being quite unproportional with 1 vote and many slots (FPTP), then become more proportional with more votes, then less proportional again as the number of votes nears the number of slots (bloc vote).
I don't see why they need a threshold in the first place. Parties that get a small number of votes get a small number of MPs, until the number of votes gets so small that the number of MPs drops below 1. That's exactly what the system should be doing, with no need for arbitrary magic numbers.
Except, in Germany a pure PR system could deliver a seat on as low a share as 0.09% of the vote, or just 36,000 votes...
So could pure FPTP of course. ;-)
Whereas in Oz, a person can hold balance of power in upper chamber, the Senate, on under 1500 votes. It has happened. Others who got far more were discarded.
I don't see why they need a threshold in the first place. Parties that get a small number of votes get a small number of MPs, until the number of votes gets so small that the number of MPs drops below 1. That's exactly what the system should be doing, with no need for arbitrary magic numbers.
Except, in Germany a pure PR system could deliver a seat on as low a share as 0.09% of the vote, or just 36,000 votes...
So could pure FPTP of course. ;-)
Whereas in Oz, a person can hold balance of power in upper chamber, the Senate, on under 1500 votes. It has happened. Others who got far more were discarded.
That's a different issue related to that crazy "above the line" shit.
I guess assuming strong partisan alignment in most cases you start being quite unproportional with 1 vote and many slots (FPTP), then become more proportional with more votes, then less proportional again as the number of votes nears the number of slots (bloc vote).
Well, District Magnitude is supposed to be the prime determinant of proportionality. Dunno if bloc vote is generally an exception to this rule. UK parliament had bloc vote and DM=2 mostly from 1364 to 1885 (aside from the brief limited vote experiment, DM=3, previously mentioned, which was more proportional).
DM=1, FPTP (or slightly less AV) is accepted as the worst, particularly for small legislatures. (LDs cottoned on, before it was too late...)
In 1884 the Tories shit themselves, and U-turned, abandoning the 500 year old DM=2, bloc vote for DM=1, FPTP, so I guess they feared the bloc vote in a newly-enfranchised electorate, more than they feared a DM=1 over a DM=2...
OK, so it's all kinds of different state government coalitions. They classify them as government/opposition/neutral, but no states are pure CDU or CDU-Green and not very many are pure SPD or SPD-Linke, so there would be zero government and nearly everybody would be neutral...
The SPD or FDP are involved in all of those Bundesrat groupings, which is possibly a bit inconvenient for a potential CDU/CSU + Green coalition in the Bundestag.
Wow, didn't realise the votes were cast in a bloc vote, so even though the delegation from each state may be split between parties, they can only vote one way. Barmy.
In 1884 the Tories shit themselves, and U-turned, abandoning the 500 year old DM=2, bloc vote for DM=1, FPTP, so I guess they feared the bloc vote in a newly-enfranchised electorate, more than they feared a DM=1 over a DM=2...
In 1884 the Tories shit themselves, and U-turned, abandoning the 500 year old DM=2, bloc vote for DM=1, FPTP, so I guess they feared the bloc vote in a newly-enfranchised electorate, more than they feared a DM=1 over a DM=2...
You ought to write a book on all this, Rod.
I'd buy it.
Luckily, I'm writing a paragraph at a time, here on PB, gratis....
Comments
242 CDU
182 SPD
61 DIE LINKE
60 GRÜNE
53 CSU
Looks like a 606 parliament. 301:305
Had FDP/AfD made the cut the Bundestag would have been considerably bigger.
What would otherwise have been 'overhang' seats are no longer classified as such, so fewer balance seats were required in the end.
Index of disproportionality is probably around 16%. Pure FPTP has sometimes performed better...
Believe me, the Germans will be embarrassed by that.
Baden-Württemberg: 6.17%
Schleswig-Holstein: 5.63%
Hessen: 5.56%
Rheinland-Pfalz: 5.54%
Nordrhein-Westfalen: 5.25%
Bayern: 5.08%
Hamburg: 4.83%
Niedersachsen: 4.18%
Saarland: 3.82%
Berlin: 3.56%
Bremen: 3.41%
Sachsen: 3.06%
Sachsen-Anhalt: 2.63%
Thüringen: 2.61%
Brandenburg: 2.55%
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: 2.19%
Sachsen: 6.76%
Thüringen: 6.17%
Brandenburg: 5.98%
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: 5.63%
Hessen: 5.59%
Baden-Württemberg: 5.24%
Saarland: 5.21%
Berlin: 4.91%
Rheinland-Pfalz: 4.79%
Schleswig-Holstein: 4.56%
Bayern: 4.29%
Sachsen-Anhalt: 4.21%
Hamburg: 4.14%
Nordrhein-Westfalen: 3.91%
Niedersachsen: 3.73%
Bremen: 3.71%
Nuts!
In practice obviously everybody gets along as best they can. I learned Japanese, but until it was good enough to be useful, people would do what they could in English. Seems like common sense to me...
Did it make the difference between 4.76% and 5.00%? I think it probably did.
Plus they've just spent 2 years wrangling to iron out a (fairly) minor kink in the old system, only to deliver something of a joke outcome instead...
CDU/CSU/FDP: 48.4%
SPD/Green/Linke: 45.6%
2013:
CDU/CSU/FDP: 46.3%
SPD/Green/Linke: 42.7%
So the gap between the two groupings actually widened.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/merkel-worried-about-losing-votes-to-weaker-partner-a-923300.html
So could pure FPTP of course. ;-)
Do electoral reform zealots have a Holy Grail of a system against which all are, unlike Sir Galahad, not worthy?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03bvx7x/The_Andrew_Marr_Show_22_09_2013/
EdM at 33.10
A Labour voter in Surrey is hardly "represented" by a Labour MP from Liverpool or Glasgow...
Neither are all Green voters UK-wide "represented" by Caroline Lucas.
By that metric MMP still outperforms (hugely) FPTP...
It's a philosophical/democratic question, eventually.
In NI, under STV, something like 90% are represented (i.e. have an MP) from their first choice party, and 80% have their first choice candidate as MP...
Better?
The clue is in the word.
A CDU/CSU + Green coalition would command the support of 49.99% of voters:
http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/bundestagswahlen/BTW_BUND_13/ergebnisse/bundesergebnisse/
21,847,570 out of 43,702,474.
Feel better now? :roll:
This is PR, old chap!
I managed to vote for 10 candidates without having a single one of them get in. Bad luck, eh? Maybe a jinx.
You say I have no representatives. I say I have 17.
For example, the CDU/CSU could just have given the FDP a free run in three constituencies, sufficient to keep them above the electoral Plimsoll line, and Merkel with her majority....
Not a bad system (for small two-party parliaments). Better than FPTP at any rate, but not reliable enough to scale up to a multi-party system...
Well, by the same token, you would also have n= ~120 "representatives" under the purest of PR list systems, e.g. Netherlands or Israel...
Sigh.... I told you it was a complex system...
Merkel 311
Oths 319
LoL...
No, that can't be it because they couldn't have won more than 299 seats...
I'll never understand it.
The trick about the Japanese system is that you want just enough candidates but not too many for fear of splitting the vote too much, so when a party does badly unlucky candidates will have their party's support pulled at the last minute. Ex-PM Naoto Kan got disciplined by the party he founded for stumping for one of his own MPs...
But (the newly-introduced) "balance" seats will negate that, while enlarging the Bundestag still further...
5 out of six parties rammed this through in Feb 2013 [dunno who voted against], after a CDU/CSU proposed amendment was found unconstitutional (after the courts had also found the old system to be unconstitutional.) They probably liked the sound of an expanding Bundestag (more bums on seats)...
Seriously, this system is mind-bogglingly complex. Cannot be calculated mentally, or on simple paper/spreadsheet.
630 seats:
Union: 311
SPD: 192
Linke: 64
Grüne: 63
SPD/Linke/Grüne: 319
http://www.welt.de/politik/wahl/bundestagswahl/article120268966/Der-Triumph-von-Kanzlerin-Merkel-ist-offiziell.html
I guess assuming strong partisan alignment in most cases you start being quite unproportional with 1 vote and many slots (FPTP), then become more proportional with more votes, then less proportional again as the number of votes nears the number of slots (bloc vote).
Although the SPD leader has ruled out serving in a grand coalition himself.
DM=1, FPTP (or slightly less AV) is accepted as the worst, particularly for small legislatures. (LDs cottoned on, before it was too late...)
CDU + FDP: 9
CSU + FDP: 6
CDU + SPD: 11
SPD + CDU: 7
SPD: 3
SPD + Green: 19
Green + SPD: 6
SPD + Green + SSW: 4
SPD + Linke: 4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zusammensetzung_des_Bundesrat.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesrat_of_Germany#Composition
I'd buy it.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesrat_(Deutschland) <-- copy/paste the link because of the brackets.
Google Chrome has a built in translate feature too, so it just translates all the text to (almost) English.
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateUpdatedByDivision-17496-NAT.htm
Two right-wing parties (FDP and AfD) slip narrowly below the threshold, thereby producing a (theoretical, at least) majority for the Left....