German Greens within 3% of the conservative CDU (the largest party in parliament)

F

FUCK THE POLICE

911 EVERY DAY
If all goes as it seems now, the next election will be the first time a Green party has ever lead a national government.


http://www.thelocal.de/article.php?ID=34783#comment2406918

Greens gaining on Merkel's conservatives
Published: 4 May 11 08:53 CET
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Germany’s highflying environmentalist Greens are breathing down the neck of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, narrowing the gap in their support to just three percentage points in a new opinion poll released on Wednesday.

In a survey by pollster Forsa for news weekly Stern, the Green party garnered 28 percent, up one point from last week. Meanwhile, Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats held steady at 31 percent.

The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) dropped one point to 21 percent – the party’s worst result since the summer of 2009.

Merkel’s junior coalition partners, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) continued to wallow below the threshold necessary to win seats in parliament at 4 percent. And the socialist Left party dipped 1 percentage point to 8 percent.

The poll puts voter support for Merkel’s centre-right coalition 14 points behind a potential centre-left alliance of Greens and the SPD.

The two parties will present their joint cabinet for Baden-Württemberg later on Wednesday after they were able to break the conservatives’ six-decade grip on power in the southwestern state by winning an election there on March 27.
 
Taking the last election and comparing how much each party has gained and lost compared to this poll, it's: CDU: 34% (-2), SPD: 23% (-2%), FDP: 15% (-11%), Left: 12% (-4%), and Greens 11% (+17%). So most of it's support seems to have come from the FDP (who are sort of libertarians), which seems weird. Maybe FDP supporters fled to the CDU and CDU voters fled to the SPD and SPD voters fled to the Greens? Political musical chairs! Whatever...

Unless the FDP can manage to stay above 5% (which is the threshold for receiving seats), there will be basically no chance of the right forming government. That would leave the left with like a 2/3 majority in terms of seats.
 
Overall percentage in a poll means little when there are so many parties to split the vote. For example, Canada's Conservatives won only 40% of the popular vote, but 55% of seats on Parliament. On the other hand, isn't half of Germany's legislature elected proportionately?
 
St. Augustine said:
Overall percentage in a poll means little when there are so many parties to split the vote. For example, Canada's Conservatives won only 40% of the popular vote, but 55% of seats on Parliament. On the other hand, isn't half of Germany's legislature elected proportionately?
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Since the Green's are so close to the CDU, the left would still probably walk away with a majority even if it weren't proportional. Anyway, only half of Germany's legislature is elected by a list, but they distribute the seats so that the end result is mostly proportional. If a party didn't win as many constituency seats as their % of the proportional vote would suggest they should receive, they're given list seats until they do. The only exception is when a party wins more constituency seats than its proportional vote, which causes a slight unproportionality (they can't very well take away those seats). Of course, they don't receive any lists seats at all in such a situation either. The main parties usually when almost all of their seats in constituencies (often overshooting and getting some "overhang" seats), and the minor parties usually get all of their seats in the lists.

The division of the vote on the left could mean that the CDU gets a lot of overhang seats (assuming they start pulling ahead of the Greens, into the 40's or something), but even in the worst imaginable circumstances they aren't going to get enough to gain a majority like this, unless they start polling in the high 40's.
 
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