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Saturday, September 23, 2017

2017 German Federal Elections Sunday September 24,2017 - Germany Votes as History Beckons for Angela Merkel, and Far-right

Germans vote in a national election on Sunday Sep 24,2017 that is likely to see Chancellor Angela Merkel win a historic fourth term and a far-right party enter parliament for the first time in more than half a century.

A total of 61.5 million people over the age of 18 are eligible to vote for the next government of the European Union's most populous nation and its biggest economy. Women voters outnumber men by 31.7 million to 29.8 million.

Voter participation four years ago stood at 71.5 percent, up slightly from 2009 and higher than in many other Western democracies.

When German voters enter the polling booth, they make two crosses on the ballot paper – one for a direct representative in their local district, the other for their preferred political party.

The first vote is meant to ensure that each of Germany's 299 districts is represented in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament.

In the second – and in many ways crucial – vote, citizens chose a party.

Ahead of election day, the parties write up their "candidate lists" in each of the 16 states. The names at the top have the biggest chance of getting a seat.

The party with the most votes then gets to send the most lawmakers to the lower house.

For example, if a party scores three direct seats through the first vote but is eligible for 10 seats overall through the second vote, seven more names on the party's state are also given seats.

A complication arises when the direct and party votes are out of balance because voters "split" their ballot.

When a party earns more direct seats than it is entitled to through its share of the party vote, it is granted the extra seats anyway. These are called "overhang" seats.

As a result, the size of the Bundestag can expand far beyond its minimum size of 598 seats. After the 2013 election, the chamber had 630 lawmakers – a figure which could even grow larger.

Parties which score below five percent of the second vote stay out of parliament altogether. This is meant to prevent excessive political fragmentation and stop potentially extremist parties.

Both the pro-business Free Democrats and the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany are expected to win seats this time after falling short of the bar in 2013.

Once polling booths close at 1600 GMT on Sunday, the question will be whether any alliance of parties has an absolute majority to elect a chancellor – half of all the lower house seats plus one.

2013 RESULTS

  • Christian Democratic Union (CDU) / Christian Social Union (CSU): 41.5 percent - 309 seats
  • Social Democratic Party (SPD): 25.7 percent - 193 seats
  • Die Linke: 8.6 percent - 64 seats
  • Greens: 8.4 percent - 63 seats
  • Free Democrats (FDP): 4.8 percent - 0 seats
  • Alternative for Germany (AfD): 4.7 - 0 seats
  • Plus 1 independent MP



Merkel's conservative bloc is on track to remain the largest group in parliament, opinion polls showed before the vote, but a fracturing of the political landscape may well make it harder for her to form a ruling coalition than previously.

With as many as a third of Germans undecided in the run-up to the election, Merkel and her main rival, centre-left challenger Martin Schulz of the Social Democrats (SPD), urged them on Saturday to get out and vote.

"We want to boost your motivation so that we can still reach many, many people," the chancellor, 63, said in Berlin before heading north to her constituency for a final round of campaigning.

In regional votes last year, Merkel's conservatives suffered setbacks to the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which profited from resentment at her 2015 decision to leave German borders open to over one million migrants.

Those setbacks made Merkel, a pastor's daughter who grew up in Communist East Germany, wonder if she should even run for re-election.

But with the migrant issue under control this year, she has bounced back and thrown herself into a punishing campaign schedule, presenting herself as an anchor of stability in an uncertain world.

Visibly happier, Merkel campaigned with renewed conviction: a resolve to re-tool the economy for the digital age, to head off future migrant crises, and to defend a Western order shaken by Donald Trump's US election victory last November

Both Merkel and Schulz worry that a low turnout could work in favour of smaller parties, especially the AfD, which is expected to enter the national parliament for the first time. On Friday, Schulz described the AfD as "gravediggers of democracy."

An INSA poll published by Bild newspaper on Saturday showed sliding support for Merkel's conservatives, who dropped two percentage points to 34 percent, and the SPD, down one point to 21 percent - both now joined in an unwieldy "grand coalition".

The anti-immigrant AfD, rose two points to 13 percent - a result the poll showed would make it the third largest party.

Should she win a fourth term, Merkel will join the late Helmut Kohl, her mentor who reunified Germany, and Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany's rebirth after World War Two, as the only post-war chancellors to win four national elections.

The AfD's expected entry into the national parliament will herald the beginning of a new era in German politics that will see more robust debate and a departure from the steady, consensus-based approach that has marked the post-war period.

Coalition building after the election will be an arduous process that could take months as all potential partners are unsure whether they really want to share power with Merkel. All major parties refuse to work with the AfD.

Electoral arithmetic might push Merkel to renew her grand coalition with the SPD, or she might opt for a three-way alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens

Germany's Political Parties


The heavyweights

-- CDU: Founded after World War II, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union is the main conservative party, popular with the upper middle class and professionals.

Under Merkel, it has moved closer to the centre by adopting more leftist policies such as ending army conscription, scrapping nuclear power and opening the country's borders to refugees.

The party has shown loyalty to Merkel, in power for 12 years, but with no clear successor in sight critics have accused it of failing to prepare for the future.

-- CSU: The Christian Social Union is the CDU's more conservative sister party in the wealthy, staunchly traditional state of Bavaria. Its pugnacious leader Horst Seehofer was one of the loudest critics of Merkel's decision to take in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in 2015.

The CSU aligns itself with the CDU at a national level. Together, they have been the leading partnersin most of Germany's post-war governments.

-- SPD: Germany's oldest party at more than 150 years old, the Social Democratic Party is the natural home of the working class and the country's powerful unions.

Supporters accused it of betrayal when an SPD-led government forced through punishing labour reforms at the start of this century. Those reforms have since been credited with helping Germany's economic boom.

The SPD has struggled to shine as the junior partner in Merkel's grand coalition these past four years, despite pushing through a minimum wage, gay marriage and measures for more equality in the workplace.

Hopes that new SPD chief Martin Schulz can turn the tide and replace Merkel as chancellor have fizzled out along with his brief surge in the polls.

Possible kingmakers

-- FDP: The pro-business Free Democratic Party stands for liberal values, espousing free market capitalism and individual freedoms. It has spent more time in government than any other party, always as the junior partner to either the CDU/CSU or the SPD.

But after a lacklustre stint governing in Merkel's shadow, it humiliatingly crashed out of the Bundestag in the last election.

The FDP is now hoping for a comeback under telegenic young leader Christian Lindner, although critics say the party's platform is too vague.

-- The Greens: With its roots in the 1970s pacifist, anti-nuclear movement, the Greens played a pioneering role in advocating for gay rights and the shift away from nuclear energy.

But the Greens have struggled to keep voters energised as their core issues have gone mainstream.

Currently polling in the single digits, some commentators predict the Greens will have to choose between staying in opposition or joining a Merkel-led government that could also include the FDP, dubbed a "Jamaica coalition" after each party's colours and the Caribbean country's flag.

Opposition voices

-- Die Linke: Founded by communists from former East Germany and SPD defectors, the fiercely pacifist, anti-corporate far-left Die Linke is Germany's main opposition party.

Despite making it into several regional governments, its radical demands for the dissolution of NATO and the end of German military deployments abroad mean it is an unlikely coalition member at national level.

-- AfD: The Alternative for Germany began life in 2013 as a eurosceptic party before morphing into an anti-Islam, anti-immigration outfit. After capitalising on widespread anger over Merkel's refugee influx, the right-wing populists won seats in 13 of Germany's 16 state parliaments.

But endless infighting and a recent slowdown in asylum arrivals have sapped support for the party. Nevertheless, it remains on track to enter the national parliament for the first time. Shunned by other parties, the AfD would be headed straight for the opposition benches

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