It’s rather difficult to figure out a what constitutes a majority when the number of seats keeps changing. A reader informed me that the Landtag, the Bavarian Parliament, had 192 seats.
DW said the total was 192 to 200 posting this chart (with my anecdotes on “complex calculations”)
CNN now says “The 18th Bavarian state parliament will now have a total of 205 seats.”
The CSU will hold 85 seats (compared to 101 seats won in the 2013 vote), the Greens 38 seats (compared to 18), Free Voters 27 (compared to 19), the SPD 22 (compared to 42), the AfD 22 and the FDP 11.
Mathematically, 85 seats vs 79 makes a difference in theoretical coalition math.
But CSU has excluded AfD and the Greens want more immigration.
SPD was humiliated in the election so one coalition choice stands out: CSU plus the Free Voters.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Thanks Jl1 and ariantes
The reason why the number of seats keeps changing is a bit difficult to explain, but I’ll try. The following is true for German federal election and most states, although not all (it is true for Bavaria). If there are elections in Germany the respective area is divided into election districts. You vote where your main residence is, either by mail or by going to a voting station.
Every voter has 2 votes, one party list vote and one candidate vote. The party list is an enumerated list of all candidates of that party. If a party gets 20% of the vote from all voting districts together and that equals 40 seats, the first 40 people on the list get a seat in parliament.
Every voting district also has a number of direct candidates (no more than one per party and no candidate can run for more than one district, and all candidates are also on the list of their respective parties). The candidate that wins a district is guaranteed a seat in parliament. This can lead to a situation where a party receives more seats than they would have by party vote alone (by a candidate winning its direct candidacy but not receiving a seat from the party list). To accommodate for this, additional seats are added to the parliament.
The German constitutional court ruled that no party may be disadvantaged by this system tho, so additional seats are added to the other parties to bring the ratio back in line with the party vote.
To make it more complicated, direct candidates don’t have to be a member of a party, joining the parliament as independents. For those a seat is added, but no other seats are added as they ratio between the parties does not change. The same is true for direct candidates who win their voting district but their party does not make it into the parliament because the party failed to receive 5% of the vote.
Interesting. For Americans, the electoral college is too complimecated a structure to wrap their heads around… This sort of “German overengineering” would cause poor Hannity’s head to explode from trying to make heads or tails of it all, in a suitably angry and partisan fashion. While the men and women and menwomen at CNN would just call it racist and global warming. While burning a polyester flag made in China and overnighted in by plane for the occasion.
Are there limitations put on who can run as non party affiliated independents? Otherwise, is there anything, other than voters’ rejection of perceived dirty play, that would prevent a bunch of “independents,” who happened to all be popular members of a party a week ago, now running as independents? While the party lists are filled up with less recognizable names.
Well, there are rules of course, but I am not 100% sure which ones apply here. Usually, direct candidates have their main residence in the election district they are a candidate for. I’m not sure whether they have to tho.
Also winning a direct candidacy is not guaranteed as it had been shown again and again with popular politicians losing to some local opponent. The only way to guarantee that your important party people get into the parliament is by putting them on the party list toward the top of the list.
Also you need to register your candidacy some weeks prior to running, so these shenanigans are difficult to pull of as you can only register one candidate per district per party.
You have to be an adult German citizen to run as well.
Free Voters appears to have immigration policies similar to CSU so they would be a good fit. Also FDP was in the past wiped out from German politics by dropping under the 5% line but after 2015 FDP has repeatedly criticized Merkel’s stupid political choices regarding asylum policy and immigration policy and that returned them to around 10%ish over whole Germany in last national elections (The Jamaica coalition of CDU/CSU+FDP+Greens never came to be because FDP stopped the negotiations when Greens were asking for loosening of immigration policies and asylum policies even further) so I would not be surprised if the Coalition ruling Bavaria will be CSU+Free Voters+FDP.
The problem in Germany however is that CSU and Seehofer are POSING as being tough on immigration policies while in actuality they are Merkel’s little poodles yapping a bit for show but still doing NOTHING to remove the over 500,000 FAILED asylum seekers from Germany and CSU and Seehofer are about to bring MILLIONS of new Syrians and Iraqis and Afganistanis to Germany since CSU and Seehofer removed the 2 year STOP put into family re-unifications so for example unemployed Syrian living on welfare can bring his wife and 6-kids to Germany now.
AfD’s problem is that they concentrate on tough talk instead of demanding from CDU/CSU clear fixes to problems.
When AfD criticizes Merkel in a general way it gives Seehofer cover to keep doing stupid things and for Seehofer AfD has had a blind spot because they believed in their stupidity that Seehofer-Merkel “fight” was over actually tigtening policies. Merkel-Seehofer fight was “play-fighting” to fool voters.