After Frauke Petry, herself not exactly a centrist by conventional standards, has left the party, the rightmost factions in the AfD are becoming even more influential (or perhaps just more visible). The party will elect a new leadership this coming weekend, and Andre Poggenburg will stand as a candidate for deputy party leader. Poggenburg, who…
If you have any interest at all in European politics, you will have noticed by now that the pre-coalition talks in Germany have collapsed on November 19. Because this could mean (amongst other things) fresh elections, and because Germans do not normally do crisis these days, and because a paralysed Germany has all sorts of…
The FDP has walked out of the German coalition talks. Here is what will happen next
The AfD’s short history is once more repeating itself, never exactly a tragedy, but ever more farcical. Back in 2015, Bernd Lucke,the then prominent face of the party, became increasingly worried about its radicalisation. He tried to strengthen his position as leader, set up a network of like-minded individuals within the party, was accused of…
The final polls for May are in, bringing the total number to 87. As in previous instances of this analysis, the bulk of the data comes from Emnid, Forsa, and INSA. As always, it would be great to have more data from the other companies to play with. Pollster n allensbach 5 8 dimap 10…
13 new polls show some movement in April It is four and half months until the September election, and things are getting a little more interesting. Everyone around here is happy that Macron saved the EU and defeated populism in one fell swoop (or maybe not), but I still love a nice parochial state election. And we…
On the 108th day of polling … … my true love gave to me: two Dimap polls, two Forsa polls, two INSA polls, one Emnid poll, and one FGW poll. So the total number of polls in the database stands at 59 now. Not too shabby. However, three companies dominate the pool: Insa (11), Emnid…
What’s the matter with the AfD? Over the last couple of weeks, the mainstream media (or as the AfD would have it, the “lying press”) have begun to write off the AfD as past its sell-by day (btw, did you realise that we won the battle against populism when Wilders performed slightly less well than…
The other day, someone on twitter suggested that the polls on the upper margins of my latest model-based estimates of AfD support were conducted by the “notoriously AfD-friendly INSA company”. https://twitter.com/freifrauvonitze/status/845565084290158593 This view is not uncommon in Germany. INSA, who do polling for Germany’s premier tabloid Bild, want to prop up support for the AfD…
Over at Diário de Notícias, Jose Fialho Gouveia has published another article on Germany, Schulz, and all that jazz, once more with a couple of my cents added. By the way, don’t you just love the imagery of beer jug hefting German politicians? [contentcards url="http://www.dn.pt/mundo/interior/merkel-perde-tapete-vermelho-e-schulz-pode-mesmo-ganhar-5745729.html"] If you’re interested, here is the English transcript of our…