At the end of April and beginning of May, support for the Green Party surged, briefly putting them in first place.
Talk of a Green government ensued. Take a look at the turn of events.
Think Germans are Green?
There are polls, and there are polls that explain the polls. The latter are the interesting ones.
An Infratest dimap poll, published June 10, debunked one of the more persistent myths about Germany – that it is naturally a green country. Germany has a strong Green party, but there is a specific history to that, one that one should not be confused with general attitudes in society.
Here are some of the highlights. Should the state outlaw behaviour that is particularly damaging to the climate? 53% say No. Are you in favour of higher petrol prices? 75% say No. Should the government encourage a shift from fuel-driven to electrical cars? 57% say No.
The Greens are back to where they were at the beginning of the year, at around 20-22% – which we think is where the current core support lies.
The above snips are courtesy of Eurointelligence.
Next Election
The next German Federal election is September 26.
It is difficult to envision any strong coalition based on the most recent polls. It is difficult to put together something that adds up to 50% that actually makes any sense.
Recall the Yellow Vest Protests
Anyone recall the Yellow Vest Protests in France when French President emmanuel Macron tried to hike the gas tax to pay for clean energy.
The protests (riots is a better word given the violence) began on November 17, 2018 and went on for a year.
Switzerland Referendum
People may say they want Green policies but no one wants to pay for them.
That was the message just a week ago when Swiss Reject Climate Change With Zoomers and Millennials Leading the Way
Comments on the Implosion
A reader commented: “If a reduction of 5 percentage points from 25 to 20 percent is regarded as “imploding” then both the Republican and the Democratic parties in the US have imploded several times.”
That’s a poor way of looking at things in a multiparty system.
Six percentage points (25 to 19) in a six-way or more multi-party system is an implosion. The Greens went from forming a government to perhaps not even being in it.
If you do the math, support for the Greens plunged 24% in about a month. Yes, that’s imploding.
I do expect the Greens will be in the next government but perhaps they prefer to be the main opposition. Curiously, there are several parties who may prefer to be the main opposition rather than a junior partner.
The next government may not be very stable.
Mish
Since I live in France perhaps I should a bit about the
Yellow Vest protests. They lasted a long time, were in many cases violent and
only stopped because of Covid. It was a rage by common people because it didn’t
seem to matter for whom or for which party you voted for you still got the same
bad to mediocre policies with the corresponding results. It was neither Right
nor Left and when politicians tried to “join and lead” they were booed out. I bring it up because today we have the second
round of the Regional elections. The first round exhibited an historic low
turnout and the second round happening now is showing a similar lack of
enthusiasm as the first. Granted many people don’t understand what a Region
actually does bur nevertheless in the past they did vote. This time it looks
that something more than 80% of the voters are saying to Hell with voting
because nothing ever changes. The party of the present government who have a
majority in the Assembly won in the last election got only 11% of the vote this
time around. There are some strange things afoot and I would expect a big
change coming but I don’t know what that change will bring. It’s boiling
underneath.
Who is parroting meaningless catchwords?