Scrapbook for September

01.09.2024 – Twisted knickers, German style

Many British commenters are still grumbling about the defects of the first-past-the-post electoral system that is used in the UK.

In the last election the Labour Party achieved the distinction of gaining a very substantial majority of seats in Parliament on the basis of a relatively feeble vote share. In contrast, the Reform UK party obtained a large number of votes but has only five MPs. Let's not even mention the Liberal Party, which over the years has learned to play the FPTP system to its advantage.

Pity the poor Germans, currently having their knickers twisted by their proportional representation system. Voters in the states of Thuringia and Saxony went to the polls today. The voters of Thuringia put the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in first place, with, at the time of writing, 31.6 percent of the vote. In Saxony, the AfD missed the first place by 1.1 percent. Here are the results at the time of writing:

Surely the regional governments can cobble together a workable coalition out of this. Well, no – all the other parties have sworn that they will never cooperate with the AfD (a tactic called the Brandmauer, the 'Firewall'). No AfD bum will ever besmirch the fine leather of a ministerial limousine.

As an image of political representation the situation in these two elections is even less democratic than the FPTP UK election. Unless there is a dramatic pivot in the Firewall orthodoxy, around thirty percent of the electorate in each state will gain a substantial number of seats in the respective parliaments but will have no leverage at all over the government of either state. The AfD will be effectively ostracised. The contempt of the powers that be for these thirty percent blocks of people who don't vote the way they should could not be more evident.

The knickers of the German political class are now in a serious twist. There will be some shenanigans in Saxony to cobble a coalition together of minority parties that few people voted for and which have in many cases diametrically opposite policies. Whatever emerges will still be a minority government.

The twist will be even more painful in Thuringia, where the AfD is the leading party, by convention now given the first shot at forming a viable government. As we suggested elsewhere, the neo-communist party Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) might in the end cuddle up to the AfD, but even then that won't make up the numbers.

Note well: A proportional representation system is only as fair as the politicians allow it to be.