21–30 of 168 posts
There are still so many emotion loaded messages, while "Die Partei" keeps making fun of them: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-germany-dortmund-may15th20...
The biggest problem with Wahl-O-Mat in my view is that it only looks at what parties claim they will do, not their historical voting record. There had been some discussion around this topic this election cycle, so perhaps they will try to address it in future iterations.
The site deinwal.de tries to address this by letting you vote on past bills and then showing you who votes most similar to you. However, for opposition parties this doesn't work reliably since they'll sometimes vote against something if it doesn't go far enough or if they disagree with the implementation details, even if they agree with the general idea. Unless you read up on the vote, these nuances will be missed. I…
As an opposition party you can basically vote what you like, you don't have to consider the consequences (because you often know it won't pass) and you don't have to compromise with a coalition partner.
Having said that: I'm generally not a fan of these tools, precisely because of those issues. Wahl-o-mat has the issue raised by the original poster, i.e. they look at what people announce, not what they do, but the alternative isn't much better, as it's comparing apples and oranges.
The biggest problem with Wahl-O-Mat in my view is that it only looks at what parties claim they will do, not their historical voting record. There had been some discussion around this topic this election cycle, so perhaps they will try to address it in future iterations.
The site deinwal.de tries to address this by letting you vote on past bills and then showing you who votes most similar to you. However, for opposition parties this doesn't work reliably since they'll sometimes vote against something if it doesn't go far enough or if they disagree with the implementation details, even if they agree with the general idea. Unless you read up on the vote, these nuances will be missed. I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty much only far-right parties that want to leave the EU nowadays.
That doesn’t mean this particular political claim is far-right ideology. If only the right-wing parties support nuclear power, does that turn nuclear power into something rightwing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not what I'm getting at at all in this case. The left in Europe tends to be highly critical of the EU, and advocates either reforming the EU radically to make it more democratic or, if that isn't possible, leaving it. This is often referred to as "soft Euroscepticism".
Which left parties in Europe are advocating leaving the EU? I think these would be more hard-left than centre-left.
E.g. the question "All of the labour force must be covered by the state pension" sounds great but glosses over the whole problem of provisioning that money for future generations (Germany's worker/pensioner ratio is supposed to sink to 1.7 in 2050) and certainly doesn't cover potential alternatives like an Australian Superannutation style system.
I hope not too many people base their voting decision on the amount of similarity they have in their answers with parties. The way questions are phrased do not always give parties a way to answer (Yes/No/Neutral) in the same way. As an example, 2 parties could both say No to a higher Co2-tax, but one of them does so because they claim climate change is a hoax, while the other one has a problem with it not being progr…
I do agree that it is really a nice conversation starter and can help people who are not sure between one or another.
These tools are rather handy for extracting actual opinions from candidates though, which they usually are pretty successful in hiding among all the PR-esque claptrap that they spew out in speech and writing.
After usage of it, it becomes apparent as to why it gets zero coverage: Almost everyone I've asked (migrant/unemployed/self-employed/postal-worker/cooks/farmer/cab-driver/...) experienced a stark surprise.
The parties they came out with, did not match at all with what is presented to them as a "good choice" by the media.
Some of my migrant friends joked that I should label them a right-winger now.
I'm not sure whether they will base their election on the Wahl-O-Mat experience alone. But it does show a huge difference in the agenda-setting of our media vs. the needs of individuals.