Interesting times!
Only exit polls!!

On Sunday, Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) won 33 percent of the votes in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state, almost 7 percent points ahead of their main rival, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) at 26.2 percent, according to exit polls by infratest dimap, released by public broadcaster ARD on Sunday evening after ballots closed.

The Greens won around 13.3 percent of the votes, about the same as last time, according to the exit poll, ahead of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) at 11.5 percent (better than last time), far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at 5.6 percent and the ethnic Danish minority party Südschleswigsche Wählerverband (SSW,) which only exists in Schleswig-Holstein, at 3.5 percent.

Source

If this is correct we see a solid endorsement for Merkel, Greens and FDP better than feared and a hand slap for Afd and SSW.

Schleswig Holstein was never going to be a home game for AfD anyway as it's a predominantly rural state without any of the typical migrant problems.

Pundits were predicting that they probably weren't going to get in at all , failing to meet the 5 percent threshold.

So in that respect I expect the champaigne corks will be flyng in AfD headquarters as I type.

Of course, neither the Western European ones (I think it's also a North-South divide), that's why the whole EU idea makes sense.

If you take Switzerland as an example of voting, it is the rural areas with practically no migrants who are voting anti migrant and the cities with many migrants who are migrant friendly!

The same as in the UK. The areas where UKIP support was highest were mainly rural areas which don't see an immigrant from one year to the next. In the cities you have migrants for neighbours and this counteracts the dehumanising effect of the campaigns in the tabloids.

Looks like the Schleswig-Holstein exit polls were reasonably accurate and the CDU finished up 7% over the SPD.

A number of newspapers showed this as a surprise result but it is in line with the published polls.

The CDU are talking about a coalition with the Greens and FDP to form a Govt.here.

Next weekend is the North Rhine-Westphalia state election, last time the SPD won with 13% over the CDU; now polls show SPD and CDU about the same

But Germany isn't Switzerland.

The political spectrum is totally diferent, with many of the major parties not having a direct equivalent in the other country. Integration is different. Attitudes of foreigners are different. For example in Germany the Turkish population voted for Erdogan's new constition by a massive margin. In Switzerland they voted against it by a massive margin. The entire situation is different.

In Germany AfD is doing very well in the big cities with high immigrant populations. Switzerland has nothing to do with it.

That was kind of expected though. You can't compare the size of Turkish community in Germany with the size of it living in Switzerland. (probably neither with some other characteristics - average education or socio-economic status)

The election in NRW will count the most.
Merkel's party has won some tiny states so far.
If they win in NRW then Schultz is done.
If SPD wins in NRW then everybody will forget Schleswig Holstein and Saarland.

I understand you have your issues with Merkel, I don't see why you have to offend the Germans just because your lot can't seem to vote for some competent politician.
Most Germans are living quite well right now, and certainly better than most Brits. I can see why they might not want to risk that.

Still, I am not happy with Merkel's shortsightedness.

According to the latest polls it is not certain SPD will win in NRW and even if they do it is likely to be a narrow lead so not a game changer for the CDU.

Wait, did I predict that the SPD will win NRW by a wide margin, or even that they will win there?

I only said that Schultz is not done yet.
He will be done if his party fails to deliver a clear victory in NRW. I don't have any predictions as of what will happen.
It is only 5 days away.

I'd say immigration numbers and UKIP votes pretty much align, look at these two sources, UKIP votes vs immigration areas.

The Humberside, Lincs and Cambridgeshire areas have large numbers of immigrant land workers.

Source? (Select UKIP)

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32624405

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/gene...your-area.html

my point exactly.

I was responding to marton who ws claimiing that because SVP does well in rural areas of Switzerland, AfD must do weel in rural areas of Germany. Not at all a good comparison.

At the end of the day, NRW may create some uplift one way or the other, but its not going to be a big game changer. SPD are so far behind nationally that they're going to need a miracle to catch up. Schultz is not that miracle worker. He is too much in his rut to be able to even understand he needs to change his game. I don't think Putin's hackers are going to be siding with him. A major terrorist incident won't play into his hands either. So what will?

This election is going to go down in history as the one SPD threw away even though all the stars were aligned in their favour.

The one big error Merkel made in the German voter's view, was to allow so many unqualified migrants to literally walk in and set up camp in Germany.

But since then she has modified her speeches, and I think German voters now realise that the SPD and Greens would have made the situation far worse, that is better for the refugees.

Barring a big scandal, I am sure Merkel and CSU-CDU will be returned with a strong government.

How were the stars aligned in their favour?
They are part of a coalition government that seems to be doing quite well (as I said, this is quite shortsighted).
Naturally this means that most people (who happen to be quite shortsighted) will vote the same as last time, since they are generally satisfied. So we are heading for one more grand coalition.

Merkel made an about turn on a previously stated policy point on the migrants.
She let large numbers into Germany, this angered the anti immigration types.

And when they arrived, a lot of things went wrong that could have been averted ahd the situation been better managed. Cologne for example. This angered both the anti immigration types and the pro immigration types.

With many sports halls and public buildings being used for migrants, this is bringing normal life in smaller towns to a halt. This is angering people who don't have much of a stake either way on migration.

The SPD could easily have blamed all these failings on Merkel. Maybe being a coalition partner there is a limit to what you can say in straight talk and you have to tone things down. But that is the advanatge of bringing an outsider like Schultz in. He can have a go at the government because he's not in it.

But then they did bring in Schultz rather then somebody more competent. He is a wannabee left wing Trump imitator only without the charisma.

The Telegraph map is really not very useful as it only shows a single year change and not a longer term view of migrant numbers.

A proper multi-year view would, I'm pretty certain, show much heavier numbers in the cities and a weak or even negative correlation to UKIP votes.

As it is anyway, London shows the heaviest immegration numbers, voted Remain and doesn't vote UKIP.

"In Germany AfD is doing very well in the big cities"

Do you have a source for this?

Contrariwise

Hamburg 2015 AfD 6%
Bremen 2015 AfD 5%

Or take a look at this!