The Greens will want to go with the SPD - but SPD will have to swallow the "coal exit", which might be psychologically a bit harder on them than on the CDU (their traditional voter-pool included many coal-workers, though not a lot a lot of those are left and I suspect a lot of those who voted SPD "traditionally", now voted for AfD anyway....)

To my horror, I discovered that the parliament now has 735 seats!

India seems to come by with 543...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_India

(Though I was shocked that India has 52 ministries...but I'm confident that we'll get more ministries too, to satisfy all the new people in Government)


Anyway, my German co-workers and myself are watching (like you watch a play in a theater) as this thing self-destructs once again

Overall, Germany has self-destructed and rebuilt several times, and the outcome is not too shabby.

Looking at the results on state level, it is mind-boggling to see the carpet of blue (AfD) in Saxony and parts of Thuringia. AfD ahead in most places by first and second vote. Only the cities stand out.

Die Zeit wrote that they see one of the reasons in this being rural counties where many young have run away and left behind an older, majority male and grumpy population that is not particularly poor but overall feels ignored. Also interesting that they find the numbers show poor AfD performance in areas with high share of people identifying as Christian.

This pretty much mimics the social and political landscape of Germany at the rise of the NSDAP (some minor differences notwithstanding)

A huge, disenfranchised group of middle-aged men with no job, no money to start a family (a lot of women having moved to cities), no hope for the future - just waiting for someone to give them that future, somehow, anyhow.

This is no secret and German politicians know how this works - and the policy in Germany has always had the goal to not allow such a situation to happen again, in the past. But somewhere along the line of the formation of the EU, they got lost, somehow.

Except that most of them are doing quite well. This is not 1932. But yes, possibly more than money it is the feeling of the forgotten men and women. Everywhere the same where populists take hold.

They had lots of help with the destructing though.

Can you back that up with data?

From commuting distances to refugees, men are generally much more mobile than women. That would have one expect that men are moving and leaving the women behind, the exact opposite of your notion.

On a Bundesland level the numbers don't seem to support your notion, women's predominance has been shrinking significantly since the Wall fell. Probably because the WW1+WW2 generations, where many more men died in the war, are dieing out. On that level today's women's predominance in the former DDR/GDR (names in red) doesn't appear extraordinary in any way. Further, such migration should be visible in the data on Berlin, certainly the biggest city would be overproportionally attractive.

And using the same logic, BaWü and Bayern should have become the strongest AfD domains, they have the lowest shares of women of all Bundesländer. It wouldn't surprise me if that was due to (domestic) migration, perhaps along with Hessen these two seem to be Germany's economic powerhouse.

(the more negative the number the bigger the women's predominance)

I don't have the stats, but women leave the rural East for cities, either East or West. Men might be mobile job-wise, but many commute on weekly basis while women tend to move away for good.

I will need to look.
I do now this data exists.

Maybe count only women who can still conceive a kid?


In the Southern Bundesländer you mention, the economic outlook is very good.
Unemployment is thus relatively low, even among men with less qualifications.

The unemployment only becomes a problem once it combines with other negative side effects and creates a deeply pessimistic outlook.

I've never actually been to any of the areas with very high AfD supporters. The ones in BW are usually considered total nutjobs (which a lot of them actually are) by most of the other population....

A lot of people in East Germany do not want to move and leave their home-towns (which I can understand, to a certain degree), they somehow hope jobs will come.

Women seem to be much more realistic and pragmatic in this regard.

Please do.
Sure, that's the mobile age. For both sexes though.

Take Dresden for instance (my first random pick). The population pyramid shows a clear underweight of the women in the fertile years. If women were moving into the city leaving the rural men behind, the overweight should be on the opposite side. Thus the pyramid shows something entirely different, IMHO either men coming or women moving far away, can't be women moving to the countryside as that's excluded by the/your claim.

I previously found this:




Cities are still OK, women-wise, because of universities etc.

Dresden is shown as having a surplus in women on your map (which is a bit dated). Its current stats say there's a clear surplus of males in that age range. Either men came or women left the city, neither conforms with the Zeit's claim.

Sorry, this doesn't add up.


(a simple plausibility check: Germans immigrating into Switzerland in 202 are 56% male. Here again, men are the more mobile, prior years show similar ratios.)