Sports Cars, Sleaze and Gamma Rays: Rhineland-Palatinate Elects Its FirstRed-Green Government

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Just under one year after the fact, here is my analysis of the latest election in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The 2011 election in Rhineland-Palatinate was a political earthquake: Following a string of political scandals, the SPD lost almost ten percentage points of their support, while the CDU could hardly improve on their disastrous 2006 result. The FDP is no longer represented in the state parliament. The Greens more than tripled their last result, allowing them to enter a coalition with the SPD for the first time.

Analyses at the municipal level show that the party improved most in their urban strongholds while still showing a (relatively) weak performance in rural areas. This will make it difficult to sustain the momentum of their victory. Moreover, the SPD is battered and bruised and needs to select a new leader, but veteran minister president Kurt Beck shows no inclination to step down. This does not bode well for a coalition that needs to organise the state’s fiscal consolidation and structural transformation.

Ministerpräsident = Präsident + Kanzler

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Den Luxus getrennter Ämter – Kanzler + Präsident – leisten sich die Bundesländer nicht. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es die Aufgaben und die Rolle eines Staatsoberhaupts auf Länderebene nicht gibt. Der Ministerpräsident übernimmt sie – beide. Damit müsste also jeder Ministerpräsident wissen, “wie Präsident geht”, denn es ist ein ureigener Teil seines Jobs. schreibt…

Robust Regression of Aggregate Data in Stata

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I’m currently working on an analysis of the latest state election in Rhineland-Palatinate using aggregate data alone, i.e. electoral returns and structural information, which is available at the level of the state’s roughly 2300 municipalities. The state’s Green party (historically very weak) has roughly tripled their share of the vote since the last election in…

Just out: Backes/Moreau (Eds) The Extreme Right in Europe

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Like a premature Christmas present, my author’s copy of “The Extreme Right in Europe” arrived before the weekend. It’s a hefty volume of almost 500 pages that comes with a equally hefty price tag of just under 80 Euros. As you can see from the table of contents (the PDF also contains the introduction and…

Are Germans More Afraid of Neo-Nazis Than of Islamists?

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Who is afraid of whom? The liberal German weekly Zeit has commissioned a YouGov poll which demonstrates that Germans are more afraid of right-wing terrorists than of Islamist terrorists. The question read “What is, in your opinion, the biggest terrorist threat in Germany?” On offer were right-wingers (41 per cent), Islamists (36.6 per cent), left-wingers…

Random thoughts on right-wing terrorism in Germany

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Unless you spent the last couple of days under a rock, you will have heard about the terrible series of (at least) ten neo-Nazi murders that has stunned Germany. In my view, three things are particularly remarkable about this crime. First, the mainstream media including the public broadcasters and the left-liberal press refer to the…