this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023

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Far-right AfD overtakes Germany's Social Democrats in polls (www.thelocal.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

You.are.so.right.. That’s all what they can do. And still… people fall for this shit! We don’t need fascists as our leader.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

If we aren't careful they will do something at least as stupid and destructive as Brexit to Germany.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also corruption is rampant and major parties pretend everything is normal, because they all make Money.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are you talking about?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Well the CDU corona mask scandal I'd assume. Different party, but it interferes with the trust in established parties nonetheless.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think they have at least some solutions, but not the kind of solution I like and support.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They seem to offer answers, very simple ones at that. But none of them are solutions to the actual problems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's usually what nationalistic, right wings parties do. They create an enemy that anyone can relate to like immigrants and make this their main narrative.

Second, they offer simple solutions to complex problems that will not work for the most part, but most people can understand these solutions.

Third, and that's especially true for the afd, they were never part of a government yet, meaning they couldn't screw anything up yet so there's little to hold against them in terms of bad decisions that had even worse outcomes.

Fourth, the afd doesn't have to face reality because they are not the responsible part of the government. They can cherry pick their favorite topics, be against anything, denounce everything the government is doing as bullshit and casually avoid any other unpleasant topic.

[+] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The numbers are sad, worrysome, and disgusting, but there is a good chance they paint a picture bleaker than reality.

And roughly the same chance that reality is even worse. We're not speaking about raw survey numbers here. These polls are corrected for the likelihood that people actually show up at the voting booth.

What is a reason to hope is the timing. Insecure times are good times for demagogues and it*s likely that the world will be a bit calmer around the next election.

[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IIRC they always did worse than in polls, am I really remembering wrong?

I'm too lazy to evaluate data for state elections, but in federal ones the AfD got less than expected in 2021 and 2013, but more than expected in 2017. The underestimations were both less than a single percentage point, the overestimation was closer to two. https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/archiv/2021.htm So it seems that our pollsters don't really have much of an accuracy problem and only a small precision problem.

My guess is that you're comparing it to the highest poll numbers because those obviously made headlines. "AfD slowly lost a few points over the last months" is boring and therefore less likely to be remembered (if that headline even exists).

[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, you are right. I did not want you to be right :(

Well, I hope I'm also right about my second paragraph: Time plays a role. We also have a snapshot here and it's likely to change.

Also: me being right doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong. The polls do fairly accurately get what voters would do if the election were next Sunday, but the country and the voters change in run-up to an actual election. People are more interested in politics around that time, parties get more vocal about their ideas and there's more about it in the media. All of that isn't good for people who claim to have easy (but useless) ideas for complicated problems. That won't stop an established demagogic party like the AfD, but I assume (too lazy to relearn R, so take this assumption with a grain of salt, I did not run the numbers), it puts the result closer to long term averages. So it's indeed unlikely a spike like this will survive until election day. That said, 15% of these people in parliament would be embarrassing enough.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Mir wird schlecht. Nicht im übertragenen Sinne, sondern wortwörtlich. Mir ist übel.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The SPD is not a great comparison number because as a party it has a severe identity crisis. They sold their soul by being in a big coalition and many people that remember what the SPD stood for don't find the party it once was. Even worse young voters don't see themselves represented by them because they see no difference to the opposition. That is why the Green Party has done so well.

The last election the SPD got more votes than everyone imagined and they still are not able to show Germany why they are a better choice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They only got more votes than imagined because the candidatebof the conservative CDU was so grossly incompetent, he laughed in the background of the president holding a speech mourning the hundreds of casualities from a flood.

The voters that them voted SPD were people whos political mind does not consider more options than CDU and SPD with the CDU being the choice of habit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel resentment towards your own country’s inhabitants.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Das traurige daran ist auch, dass die FDP immer noch die 5 Prozent Hürde schaffen würde.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Finland's far-right got into the new cabinet. Last time they split but were still paying for the policies the cabinet managed to establish for a long time

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The East has already been overtaken by these illiterate pieces of shit and it's getting worse than it was before. Meanwhile as long as die Linke keeps Wagenknacht as de facto spokesperson, they'll never get anywhere in elections.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think we need a local social-conservative party similar to the CSU in bavaria for the east to ever bring political stability to this region. The afd is the worst choice for that, but the local identity in the east is similarly strong as in bavaria, so many will never trust a federal party again after everything that happened in the last 30 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

A far-right party on the rise in Germany. Here we go again…

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

I would never listen to polls. They mean nothing.