Lower Saxony just held the last of 2022’s four state elections. The result is mostly in line with the pre-election surveys: both the SPD and the CDU (which in this state formed the last remaining Grand coalition) lost a few points, but the SPD remained stronger overall and is perceived as the winner. The Left…
[contentcards url="http://www.lidovky.cz/merkelovou-ceka-velky-test-uspeje-v-nedeli-u-trojich-zemskych-voleb-11l-/zpravy-svet.aspx?c=A160311_212339_ln_zahranici_ELE"] So once in a lifetime, I was interviewed by a Czech newspaper. I recognise the people in the photo. And my name.
A mere three hours after the event, it’s obviously too early to write something coherent about the three state elections that were held in Germany today. So let’s try it anyway: For the time being, Germany has a viable Radical Right Populist Party. A result of ~24% in the Eastern state of Sachsen-Anhalt is a…
[contentcards url="https://global.handelsblatt.com/edition/387/ressort/politics/article/merkel-braces-for-bruising-encounter-with-the-electorate"] Over at Handelsblatt Global, Siobhán Dowling has another excellent article on the state of German (state) politics, with a little input from yours truly.
The new CDU-Green coalition in Hesse opens up a whole host possibilities beyond the entrenched pattern of party competition in Germany. Volker Bouffier emerged as an unexpectedly shrewd political operator who presented his party – in Hesse, the other Länder and perhaps even in Berlin – with new options beyond the unloved Great Coalition and the outdated CDU/FDP formats. Plus lots of interesting stuff about names in German Politics
As predicted yesterday, the nuclear disaster in Japan is having a profound impact on something as trivial as three state election campaigns in Germany, more than 9000 kilometres away. Roughly 70 per cent of the population believe that an incident on the scale of the Japanese catastrophe could happen in Germany, too. The Federal Government…
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption] It’s amazing: Just 36 hours after the horrible earth quake in Japan, 60000 people are demonstrating in Swabia – against nuclear energy. While we do not know whether the Japanese plants are actually in meltdown, for the German liberal-conservative coalition, this is certainly the Most Credible Accident. One…
Colleagues Andrea Römmele and Thorsten Faas have set up a new blog that will cover the many German elections of 2009 (seats in the federal parliament, several state parliaments, local councils as well as the presidency are all up for grabs) and asked me to contribute. How could I resist them? “Wahlen nach Zahlen” (voting…