The ‘Institut für Staatspolitik’ is a well-known far-right ‘think tank’. Their self-stated meta-political mission is to educate the future nationalist. The long-term objective is to achieve a stealthy transformation of German society. They have been around for a while, and there are books and chapters about them, written by people who study right-wing extremism for…
Today’s elections in Brandenburg & Saxony are sending a new set of shock waves through German politics. Here are some quick thoughts. The AfD polled about 28 per cent in Saxony, their best result yet. Saxony is truly the AfD’s heartland. The AfD did also well in Brandenburg. In both states, they are led and…
[caption id="attachment_28859" align="alignnone" width="884"] Results of the EP 2019 in Germany (exit polls as of 7pm)[/caption] It will take some time to get nearly-final results for Germany, let alone for the EU, but the picture emerging from the exit polls in Germany is reasonably clear. So, in time honoured tradition, here are my hot takes:…
Germany – no EP electoral threshold for the last time There are currently 111 ‘political associations’ registered with Germany’s federal electoral commission. 41 of them (counting the CDU and the CSU separately) are fielding candidates in the upcoming European elections.Why are they doing it? Narcissism aside, this is a national election that is held without…
Our local party system may have collapsed, giving way too much room to the officers & gentlemen / wannabe parish priests. But just when I thought I had seen the worst, the regional CDU got it in their head to prove that even with the benefit of professionally designed templates and logos, things can go…
Local democracy is a good thing. It is also one of the good things that you can have too much of. After almost sixty years of territorial reforms, Rhineland-Palatinate, a state that harbours about 5% of Germany’s total population, is still home to about 2,500 of the nation’s ~11,000 municipalities. There may be an EP…
It’s that time again: EP and local elections are in conjunction, and politicians are wasting public space and money on election posters from hell. In national campaigns, election posters are a remarkably inefficient way to burn through campaign funds. Their main function is to remind voters that their party still exist. Apart from that, they…
