Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "Germany after the election: What’s next (and what could go wrong)? | DW News" video.

Yes, it is. As well as many other language news. Germany is a important nation. Its politics is important to the rest of the world. Of course there's more coverage when there's a genuine chance of a change of chancellor. But it's always covered at least to some degree.
10
If you think German elections are fragmented you've seen nothing yet. Norway has 169 seats representing a population of about 5 million people, and we have 10 political parties represented in our parliament after this years election. The smallest represented party had 0,2% of the total national vote supporting them, and is fighting for a hospital in a part of the country that has more representation relative to their population size then the rest of the country, similarly to how US states have political power not just based on population. My own party has 3 seats, up from 1 last election with 3,9% of the votes, if we had 4% we would have had 7 seats, 3 from the individual electoral circles and 4 leveling seats on top of that. The communists increased their number of seats from 1 to 8 in this years election and was one of the big winners of this election. When you have multiple political parties you end up with multiple political axis, not just left-right. If Germany had more political parties represented, like we do then there would have been more possible coalition options available and the parties could shop around more for a possible coalition.
5
There might be more parties in parliament now then before. But there's still way too few in my view. 5% just is too high, and the 3 first past the post seat alternative is just too favorable for big parties and too hard for small ones. 5% for the proportional seats at a national level wouldn't be so bad if the local seats where also proportional (but without any lower limit). Merge the current first past the post electoral circles, perhaps 4 and 4 of them then add another seat or two there. More in certain areas if there's a need to increase representation there for whatever reason. The national level proportionality would still correct for the lower number of seats in the local electoral circles. And by making the local electoral circles proportional it's not as unfair towards smaller parties and you keep the locality of the election, ensuring that every area is fairly represented. Making a party popular enough in one electoral circle to gain a seat or two isn't as difficult as winning a first past the post electoral circle or reaching 5% of the votes. Yet, 5% would be something to strive for as parties above that would be able to significantly increase their relative power, yet smaller parties can still be king makers by holding the balance of power and negotiating on a case by case basis on policies. That should also hopefully help increase the number of paths towards a majority.
3
@MellonVegan If you guys think it's a problem that FDP is the kingmaker, change the electoral system to include more parties, so the larger parties have more options for potential coalition partners in order to form a majority or at least get support for a minority, and also get over the fear of minority goverments, they're a good thing, not a bad one.
3
Because of Germanys past any links to said past is taboo...
2
@Bln-f9u The German electoral system is unfair towards smaller political parties. Is there any parties that campaign for a electoral reform? Here in Norway the smallest party represented in our 169 seat parliament had 0,2% of the national vote. All of our seats are proportional. We have 19 regional electoral seats and 150 of our 169 seats are distributed among these 19 seats based on both population and land area. There's no lower limit to how many votes you need to get one of these seats, hence a seat with just 0,2% of the votes. The remaining 19 seats are given based on how many seats a party should have gotten at a national level, including the ones they got from the regions, but has a threshold of 4% My own party MDG in Norway ended up with 3 seats because we got 3,9% of the votes, if we had 4% exactly we would have had 7 seats, 3 from individual electoral circles, and 4 leveling seats. The communists (Rødt) got 8 seats, up from just 1 last election. We have 10 political parties represented in our parliament despite having fewer seats in our parliament then Germany does and despite having a far smaller population. 3 left wing, 4 centrist and 2 right wing parties + a new party that I'm honestly not sure about (that 0,2% party).
1
@JaIch9999 Perhaps the wrong conclusions where drawn? The ideal is to maximize the number of real options that people have. Back then you had few big parties because the electorate was too fractured among many tiny parties. Now there's few big parties because the electoral system unfairly favors the biggest ones. In both cases you end up with the same exact issue, too few real options. Back then people had no idea about what exact small party to vote for to have a real shot at making any change if they didn't favor one of the big parties. And there was no incentive towards merging parties or strategically voting for a party that's not a exact fit with your own beliefs if non of the big parties where appealing, otherwise all the incentive ended up being towards the big ones that had a real shot at power. Now you're locking people into few big parties again but with different mechanisms. The country I live in, Norway also have incentives towards merging parties like Germany does. But it's still proportional at every level. And there's no lower limit to how many voters a party needs to get represented. The way that's achieved is that instead of the German single representative first past the post electoral circles we have 19 proportional electoral circles, 150 of our 169 seats are distributed among these circles, then people are appointed to them proportionally based on the popularity of the various party lists, people can be in more then one list, and lists can be modified, reordering people. But there are limitations on both of these things. The remaining 19 seats are then distributed at a national level in the same way that the German proportional seats are distributed, after accounting for the first past the post seats. There's no lower limit for the number of votes needed to get a seat in the individual electoral circle. But to qualify for the remaining 19 seats elected at a national level your party needs at least 4% of the national vote. So the difference between 3,9% of the vote and 4% of the vote can be 2-3 seats for the lower percentage and 7-8 seats for the higher percentage. So two parties with 1% or 2% of the vote has a incentive to merge if their values are similar enough, but they don't have to in order to get represented in our parliament. In this last election a party made it into our parliament with just 0,2% of the national votes from the electoral circle with the most seats pr voter in the country, on a platform of fighting for a local hospital. So we get that local representation just like Germany does with the first past the post system. Yet, every single representative in our parliament was voted in proportionally and the seat allocation within the electoral circles was as close to the real proportions as possible, not favoring the bigger parties at all. Those 19 seats only corrects the difference between the individual electoral circles and the national vote, so that's also 100% proportional. So our only arguably non-proportional rule is that 4% rule, but it actually serves to empower our smaller parties, motivating people to vote for them. And the bigger parties to work with them. As a result we have 10 political parties in our parliament this election (that 0,2% party got representation at a national level for the first time ever this year). Our electoral system isn't perfect. But it encourages cooperation. It gives each political party more room for maneuvering with regards to each other, more so then in the German system where the parties are essentially both locked into having to cooperate with parties that does not share their values when running the country. Our system does encourage the formation of minority governments. I actually consider that a strength, since it leads to a more dynamic legislative branch where the opinions of the voters are more closely reflected in the laws since parties will cooperate on a case by case basis when forming laws all the time, meaning that it's the majority for the individual proposed law that matters rather then what combinations of of parties makes up a majority at a single point. Yes, it does mean that we often change cabinets a bit more then once pr election. But I don't think of that as a weakness. We don't do snap elections. If a cabinet falls it can only do so if another alternative is ready to be presented. As for predictability, you know the election result in terms of relative power of the parties, and you can make predictions based on that, just like the various flags discussed in this latest German election. There's always certain combinations that's likely or required in order to make a change between elections. And with the proportionality you can also predict the outcome better using polls prior to the election too giving companies and society at large a better idea about what to prepare for either way. The biggest drawback however is likely that it's hard to predict what exact representatives ends up with those 19 leveling seats. Both what parties ends up qualifying for the 4% threshold and what representative on the 19 different party lists that ends up with those seats when they qualify. The math is complicated. And while a party can ensure that certain seats goes to certain important party members in electoral circles where they know they're going to get at least x number of seats by placing their most important representatives first in the list in those electoral circles. They still have no way of knowing what electoral circle they end up getting a leveling seat from, if they get one. So people that's not first on the lists are dealing with a lot of unpredictability. And so are voters who care about individual person rather then the party. Our system is extremely focused on political parties at the cost of having little power of what exact individuals ends up in control. You can gather signatures and present a new list with representatives you want elected (possibly also members in other parties, if you can get their consent), and if your list gets enough votes you may get them represented that way. But that requires the list you presented to get enough voters itself to get at least one representative on its own, on part with a real political party (what happened with that 0,2% party). Or you can vote for a party and reorder the representatives in favor of your preferred candidate, but the change isn't even going to be counted unless a significant percentage of the voters for that party has made a change too. Not necessarily the same change, just a change. But still. In either case you need a significant amount of support in order to get people into the parliament who are not at the top of the party lists for a party that's able to get representation, and unless that party can reliably get representation you can't really make predictions about who exactly ends up in the parliament. Also, even if you're on a list and don't get elected, you could suddenly end up in parliament just because someone died, got sick or took parental leave. And yes, perhaps our system does favor the smaller parties a little too much in the relative power play at times. My own party had 3,9% of the votes this election, going up from 1 to 3 representatives, if we had just a few hundred more votes we'd probably have 7 seats. Out of a total of 169 seats. With that 4% rule the winner of an election can end up being decided by just a few hundred votes like that, since those small parties often end up with the balance of power. So if one party has 3,9% and another has 4% that might lead to a significantly different outcome then if those two parties switched places. This election was one of those elections where what parties would get more then 4% became extremely exciting, with a whopping 4 parties close to that line. My own included. My own party didn't make it this time. But that's okey. We still increased our representation, and we'll make it next time. Since the system is proportional at every level we don't feel unfairly underrepresented. Our core areas requires more voters pr seat then that 0,2% party, but that's okey, there's a reason why this country decided to distribute the seats between the electoral circles the way it did. (It's all about ensuring that every region is well represented, regardless of total population, and to ensure that high population density areas don't dominate too much, after all, if you have two places, one with 10 x the population of the other all living in the same city, the people in that 10x population area probably have similar experiences with regard to that area so having 1 or 10 people from there won't make much difference in ensuring that the 10x place gets its concerns heard, but the 1x place have fewer people, and people in that 1x area might not interact with the 10x area often enough for the ones in the 10x area to ever really know and understand what concerns the people in the 1x area has, so their representation is more important, even if it comes at the cost of the relative power of the 10x area, so we grant representation based on both population and land area, so a big land area with few people will still get a decent amount of representation, in this election enough to give a party representing them a seat in our parliament despite only having 0,2% of the total national votes supporting them) Democracy are not about getting the best people in charge. Or to rule by a majority. It's about ensuring that everyone feels that they have a influence on their everyday life. And to find a consensus that everyone can live with.
1
@MellonVegan What happened in Thuringia? As for not working with AfD at all... That's probably not a good idea, and will only increase their vote share. It's better to include them but keep in political work but to keep them on a tight leash. Perhaps there's non-racist policies of the AfD that can be implemented that makes some sense?
1
@emilsinclair4190 My thought was that there's just too few parties, and no real alternatives to FDP for a coalition... See my description of the situation in my own country to get an idea about what I mean.
1
@lamiz3786 Exactly, and my objection is that there is too few parties in the German parliament. And that the relative power is too skewed towards the bigger parties. In my view the ideal situation is one where there's multiple paths towards a majority. In Germany that's barely the case, for instance AfD can be ignored by the other parties because there's other paths to majority that doesn't include them. But the way I see it there should be more, and the relative power of parties should be more proportional, even among the smaller parties. Germany has two methods of getting into parliament. Having more then 5% of the votes or being the biggest party in 3 first past the post electoral circles. Both of these discourages smaller parties too much. What I would suggest is to change that 5% rule to just being a requirement for the seats that's proportional at a national level. And to merge some of the single seat electoral circles and possibly also adding seats there to make them more proportional. Not necessarily making all of them proportional, but make most of them proportional at a local level. So instead of 4 electoral circles with 1 seat each you could have 1 with 5 seats for instance. The two biggest parties might get 2 or 3 of those seats, but smaller parties could get a seat there too. How the proportional seats are distributed could also be tweaked to favor bigger or smaller parties, and I believe it currently favors bigger parties in Germany also when it comes to the national proportional seats.
1
@NeverEverII My understanding was that the first past the post seats where only given to parties that wins at least 3 first past the post electoral circles or 5% of the vote. A party getting neither (say 2 first past the post seats and 4,9% of the national vote) would not be represented unless it's a party representing a minority like the Danes. I thought they got their seat through a first past the post electoral circle and kept it despite only having one first past the post electoral circle mandate and less than 5% of the votes, but I'm glad to hear that they got their seat through proportionality instead. That was my mistake. But unless you got a source saying otherwise then I'll have no reason thinking that you can get representation without those first past the post seats needing to coming from 3 places or the party needing 5% of the total electorate to get a seat in parliament, except of course for the recognized minority parties.
1