Super 2017

Red Baron is always fascinated by America's Super Tuesdays. Here in Germany, we live through a Super Year with three state elections in spring and our federal election on September 24.

Last Sunday, the people of Germany's smallest state, the Saarland, started Super 2017. They were called to the polls to elect a new state parliament. The results do not represent the upcoming federal election but show general trends.

©BZ

The CDU, Chancellor Merkel's party, gained an additional 5.5 % of the votes thanks to the excellent work of incumbent Ministerpräsident (Governor) Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. An analysis showed that older people afraid of a Red-Red coalition between the Social Democrats and the Linke (Left) showed up at the polls in high numbers voting Christian Democrats. At the same time, they were boosting voter turnout from 61.6 last time to 69.7%.

The grand coalition partner SPD lost 1%, and some commentators concluded that the Martin Schulz effect did not work. That is fake news, for before Schulz had been nominated chairman of the Social Democrats, the party had trailed only at a meager 24%.

The results were disastrous for the Greens, with a mere 4%. They will no longer be represented in the state parliament*. The ecological party has somewhat lost its reason for existence. Nowadays, all German parties have a green touch, more or less. The statement that climate change is man-made is generally accepted in Germany, and measures to limit the emission of CO₂ are agreed upon, although sometimes reluctantly. In addition, recycling materials is an absolute must for a country with only lignite as its principal natural resource.
*In Germany, the so-called 5% hurdle exists, i.e., a party must have gained at least 5 % of the votes to be represented in parliament.

The Free Democrats generally gain votes of discontented CDU voters, but since there were no, the FDP failed its entry into the Saarländischer Landtag. Forget the Pirates, who had their best time with protest voters around 2012. They fell out of the state parliament too.

Nowadays, protesters vote for AfD (Alternative for Germany), but the mere 6.2% were a bitter disappointment when party officials had rather reckoned with a two-digit result.

©ZGV/BRAZ

While fake news is à la mode, the AfD produced a phony photo of Martin Schulz presenting him as a liar. Admittedly Martin is no beauty. Alienating his face and Facebooking the picture is perfidious, an SPD colleague said, this shall deliver two messages: The hooked nose is the classical hallmark of the eternal Jew as used in the anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda, and the puckered lips stand for naïvety. Martin's fake photo heavily backfired on social media, so in the meantime, the AfD withdrew the picture.

Did you know that @POTUS congratulated Chancellor Merkel on her (??) election victory at the Saar? Ouch! Who told him that fake news?

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