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German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT
- wohfab 5y agoLet's hope, they're wrong. This corrupt idiot will destroy anything and everything. He just signed a paper to make building wind turbines A LOT harder and even wants to prevent people to take legal action against it.
- exporectomy 5y agoAs someone who knows nothing about that issue, what you said is neither here nor there. That makes it look like you're just repeating a political talking point without understanding why it matters or what it means. There's nothing inherently wrong with making building wind turbines harder. Maybe it's for safety reasons, or to protect the environment or workers rights or property rights or whatever. It's absolutely the government's job to make some activities more difficult when necessary.
- adrianN 5y agoThere would be nothing inherently wrong with making building wind turbines harder if you actually presented an alternative means of reaching carbon neutrality fast.
- exporectomy 5y agoNot sure you understand my point. Imagine, for example, the industry was poorly regulated and filled with cowboys. Lots of workers were getting killed in accidents and the government made stricter safety regulations to protect them but it also increased the difficulty of building wind turbines. Is that really a bad thing? Should they sacrifice human life to get maximum speed towards carbon neutrality?
- detaro 5y agoimaginary scenarios are relevant to actual politics being criticized how?
- Sebb767 5y agoThat's exactly the point the grandparent made - as long as we don't know the actual circumstances, we can only imagine scenarios (that can go either way) and these do not matter.
- detaro 5y agoso the point is that a short throwaway comment in an online forum didn't contain the full context for people who know nothing about the situation? And instead of asking for context we rather go "oh but there are theoretical situations where your statement is bad!"?
- Sebb767 5y agoexporectomy asked for the context in his first comment [0]. adrianN (the OP) replied by saying that he thinks there is no scenario where this might be a good thing, so exporectomy provided one. This shows that simply filling in an imaginary scenario is not sufficient, as you can spin the story either way - making imaginary scenarios useless, as you correctly pointed out. So the overall this subthread is asking for context and then clarifying why it's needed. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709355
- exporectomy 5y agoYes. Without the details, the information says neither good or bad about the politician so what's the point of saying anything more than "I don't like him"? It's the type of fact that people repeat because it fits their prejudice and they forget that it lacks meaning. Great for talking past people with and helping no-one understand anything.
- 5y ago
- edhelas 5y agoNuclear power plants ?
- PennRobotics 5y agoNo. For whatever reason, basically all political parties in Germany are anti-nuclear, and the country is phasing out their last working reactors next year.
- corty 5y agoNot quite. AfD is pro-nuclear, CDU/CSU is opportunistically pro/con, FDP the same (i guess). Only the left is firmly opposed. The thing is that the anti-nuclear public sentiment is strong enough that any pro-nuclear movement or politics is doomed to fail. Any pro-nuclear move is political suicide.
- pudo 5y agoI'm curious how well this will fare in a German context, as opposed to the US, where 538 now seems a solid part of the campaign season. Some differences come to mind: voter participation in DE is higher and campaign cost is much lower, meaning it is perhaps a bit less about activating your supporters and more about actually getting people to change their preferences. Volatility seems really high, too - see the recent rise and fall of the Greens. There's also a few weird turning points, like the 5% quorum that could conceivably hit the Left this season. And there's the non-fixed number of seats. So: congrats, INWT, for the nice marketing. Let's see if you picked a good model :)
- fabian2k 5y agoGerman elections are much less tactical and significantly more boring than US elections. The US system creates much bigger swings based on small differences and creates much more of a narrative around campaign strategies. In Germany you pretty much just look at one poll for all parties and the popularity of the potential chancellors, but that's it.
- denkquer 5y agothis isn't a bad thing
- fabian2k 5y agoI'm not saying it's a bad thing, I like boring and reliable elections with more than two choices. But I suspect that this also means that there is simply not that much interest for a 538-like site in Germany.
- corty 5y agoThe election is also far less influential, because there will always be a coalition in power, where sometimes single-seat differences (often resulting from weird specialties of the election system like Ueberhangmandate and Ausgleichsmandate) decide on the (non-)viability of some option. And all the election programme of a party is very much up for discussion in coalition talks: A famous example of a coalition compromise: 2005 SPD promised "leave VAT at 16%", CDU promised "VAT raise to 18%". Their compromise? raise VAT to 19%. The election is the boring part, the talks right after the election decide what will happen.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adrianN 5y agoNow it's only a small step until we finally have the technology to make voting completely unnecessary. /s
- artemonster 5y agoI have immigrated into this country 12 years ago and became citizen 3 years ago and still, to this day, some facets of german culture fascinate me. Most of germans have seriously high threshold for „pain, which reflects in almost every everyday life situation: 1. customer service is abysmal and they are ok with it. 2. bureucratic machine is horrible and they are ok with it. 3. politics stagnating last decades and they are okay with it. 4. so little doctors with super long waiting times for so many people (to the point of memeing about it) - and they are okay with it. 5. no wealth accumulation through generations because its impossible to buy anything. Everyone rents and they are okay with it. Nothing gets built, infrastructre expnsion is non existent in cities. Impotence in the government (digitalisation is a joke right now, everyone knows berlin airport fiasco, now vaccination stuff) is the most infuriating one for me and yet they still vote for CDU. At this point I have no idea how to understand this. CDU have lost many of its voters not because people had „enough“ and switched, but because lots of CDU electorate just died of old age. sigh
- pudo 5y agoI really feel what you're saying. It's deeply aggravating. I feel a lot of it is due to the high level of wealth and overall satisfaction that much of German society has experienced for the past few decades (inb4: I know there's poverty here). It's a very weird form of decadence, based on the principle that "this worked well so far". My coping strategy is to remind myself that it's probably the linked flip side of many of the things that I appreciate - good labour and consumer protection, good healthcare, public transport, a not-totally-fucked income distribution. But: yeeeaaaah.
- avh02 5y agoas big as a fiasco as BER was/is - it turns out it's (attempted) infrastructure expansion. That and stuff like U5 extension, etc (is it a tourist line? sure, but it's work being done). Trialing/using Electric buses is another one (though they have suffered in both heat and cold). I'll grant you digitization being crap - don't understand why copper is still king here. Politics I don't pretend to understand or care about, i just like that nobody's shooting/assassinating/oppressing each other (turns out that's a surprisingly high bar in the world). vaccinations definitely sucked/were late, but it's finally now ahead of many (even first world) countries [0] [0]: some selection: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_vaccinations&Metric=People+fully+vaccinated&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=DEU~Europe~USA~GBR~FRA~CAN~KOR~NLD~ISR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
- undfg 5y agoThe three candidates seem to be from the left. That's really odd. I guess things there are like here in Spain and the right wing is ridiculously emasculated? (Someone flagged this but I would still like an explanation. If you don't want to post it that's fine but you don't have to flag it)
- fabian2k 5y agoIf you mean the chancellor candidates, the most likely one is Laschet from the CDU, which is certainly not left. They're the major conservative party in Germany.
- undfg 5y agoI read their party programme and they weren't conservative. They are, like "right wing" parties in Spain, conservatives only in name. They are as progressive as the rest of left wing parties. Hence my question.
- mlang23 5y agoI wonder how much it costs to walk up to one of these forecasters and buy the first place. Given how popular forecasting seems to be, I am convinced there is a good bussiness model behind.
- exporectomy 5y agoHow would they make the 3rd party poll results they show fit with the false prediction?
- neppo 5y agoThe forecast over time shows the green candidate to rise sharply to be favorite and then decline over the last 2 months - what happened?
- number6 5y agoThere where mistakes in here resume. Nothing too bad, but I guess this depends on which political side you are on. Of course PR used it to gain a foothold and it seems to work pretty good. Guess the other party saw the numbers and activated its network to counter.
- corty 5y agoThe Greens had and squandered the oppportunity to present themselves as being fresh, unencumbered, honest, evidence-based, non-corrupt. Baerbock's resume problems and the plagiarized book sections destroyed that hope, as well as her election as a women over an obviously more qualified man (Habeck). So the Greens lost their advantage in that regard, now they are just one bad option among other bad ones with regards to political ethics. At the same time, the CDU started to enact some Green policies like raising fuel prices, but doing so with the hint that they would look out for the economy and the little man and be more responsible than the Greens. Since the greens also include some pretty radical eco-deindustrialist people, that move made the CDU look like a better alternative while still soothing peoples' bad eco conscience. So yes, bad PR work by the Greens, good PR work by the CDU/CSU.
- inglor_cz 5y agoAt the beginning, there were irregularities in her CV. Now she has a recently unearthed history of plagiarism in her book and the party tried its best to avoid confession of any wrongdoing. Also, there was a gender-related shitshow in Green primaries in Saarland. Basically the country leadership of the Green party hates the idea that a female #1 was voted out of the Saarland list three times in a row, thus giving an opportunity for a male candidate to lead the list (contrary to the Green rule that odd-numbered positions in a list, including #1, of course, must go to women). Saarland is small but still pretty prominent in German politics, generating a lot of federal-level politicians. And a lot of attention, because the story is pretty bizarre. The next chosen woman for #2, Irina Gaydukova, had a very bad interview that basically showed her unable to address very simple question and cast doubt on her ability to speak German at a professional level. It reminded some voters thad IdPol is sort-of tacky and the Green party is very deeply into IdPol. Baerbock does not seem to be a very strong candidate personally. She was basically chosen over Habeck because she was of the right gender, not because of any obvious political advantage over him. But Germany has had 16 years of female chancellorship by now, so the idea of having a woman run the country is no longer particularly new or attractive. But to be honest, all the leading candidates are fairly boring, perhaps with the exception of Olaf Scholz, who nevertheless leads a very dysfunctional party (SPD) and does not really have a shot. So it is a fight between equals in mediocrity.
- akie 5y agoHaving Armin Laschet as the new Kanzler would be an unmitigated disaster. He's about as clever as George W., and as helpless and uninformed as Jeb. Thank god he's not actively malicious. An empty vessel of a politician. Let's hope a coalition with the Greens will force him towards reasonable policies nevertheless.
- corty 5y agoI think Baerbock looks quite on paar with Laschet, problem-wise: Where Laschet had his invented grades because he misplaced some tests during his time as a professor, Baerbock plagiarized in her book. Both have had "problems" in their CV. Both are the second-rate candiates of their party, chosen for pleasing everyone, not for being outstanding or competent in any way. Baerbock was chosen over Habeck because she is a woman, where Habeck was obviously more qualified. Laschet was chosen over Merz and Soeder because the latter ones would have had some controversial ideas. Whereas Laschet, while being unpopular in general, never stepped on anyones toes (that being his only notable skill). Whether any outcome will or won't be a desaster depends on the coalition that is formed after the election. And after the coalition is formed, who is going to occupy which ministry, and what compromises they had to make to get the coalition going. My nightmare scenario would be a CDU/CSU/Green coalition where the greens impose all their eco taxes and policies, but just on the peons, because the CDU protects their buddies in the industry and agriculture. Any eco tax reimbursement the Greens are currently promising will of course be swallowed up by "sorry, there is no money" and "we need to be fiscally responsible after all".
- bakuninsbart 5y agoShe did not plagiarize in her book. The guy who "broke the story" has a blog with the last 8 stories about how the Greens would destory Germany. He is properly obsessed. Here's a law expert of our public broadcaster explaining how much there is to the story: Nothing. [0] This is a predictable campaign to prevent a centre-left coalition. [0] https://twitter.com/fewizi/status/1409869123111342092 https://twitter.com/fewizi/status/1409869123111342092
- 5y ago