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Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

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Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#41

Post by belorn »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #5
dry_soup wrote: post #3

> Others seem designed to detect far-right tendencies. “Germany should leave the European Union,” reads one. So if you're not neoliberal, you're far-right. Got it.

It's pretty much only far-right parties that want to leave the EU nowadays.

Are you talking about Germany only?

In Sweden and Norway we have had parties that want to leave EU on both side of the political spectrum.

The EU question has many aspects to it, in particular when it comes to fees, democratic control over laws, and voting rights. You need strong incentives to keep smaller countries that pay way more than they get back and which voting impact is dwarfed by larger countries. An argument I see in both countries is to simply force EU to lower the EU membership fee by putting down an ultimatum.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#43

Post by bencollier49 »

One problem with this sort of thing is that the "who would you rather have a beer with" question is actually vastly important in black swan situations. If you believe that a candidate shares your basic instincts and cultural mores, they're likely to take the choice you would in an unexpected circumstance, like the Covid pandemic, for instance.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#44

Post by maweki »

fsh wrote: post #23
sc11 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This doesn't even work that well for the governing parties. Coalition governments are based on the parties making compromises where their positions disagree. This means that in particular the smaller partner(s) have to vote against their own program most of the time if they want to at least get their core issues through the parliament. Unfortunately, an alarming number of people seem not to know this.

But aren't most people disappointed by the social democrats because they don't fight hard enough for their core issues?

Or if they really just bring their core issues through, they seem to be surveillance and not social issues.

If you make a coalition government with the conservatives and you take their program as the coalition program, you did a bad job in forming the coalition.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#45

Post by IndySun »

tomthe wrote: post #17
sc11 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am one of the creators of deinwal.de Your description is spot on, although we tried to exclude votes where something did not "go far enough" for some parties. AMA.

tomthe...

>AMA

When the voter is presented with these vote/policy questions, are they ranked in any way, for example, is a climate question 'more valuable' than the autobahn speed.

How is the order of the yes/no/neutral questions decided, for example from serious to less serious? Who decides?

Who has final say on the question wording?

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#46

Post by _ph_ »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #18

Is voting based on matching your exact ideology a good idea? You could have a system where everyone has a party that represents their views exactly, but democracy is about compromise, which takes political skill. This should be a factor in voting. In the UK, up until recently we had a pretty far left guy called Jeremy Corbyn in charge of Labour, the largest left wing party. I was pretty aligned with him on a his idea…

Such a tool can give only a guide to which parties might represent your ideas best. I ran through it, it went into the direction I am deciding to, but not very precisely. That is already the case because the questions can capture your intents only coarsely.

For your actual decision, a lot of other aspects should play a role. In general, the party should have more weight than the individual candidate, but only so much. And especially, in Germany the government will consist of a coalition of at least 2 parties, probably 3 this year. While I do think that on the first order of approximation you should elect the party which represents you best, sometimes strategic considerations can play a role too.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#47

Post by MildlySerious »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #9

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…

This was something that I really noticed this year, not so much in the previous cycles. Maybe because my mind was already made up and the results really didn't reflect my expectations very well.

After you get your result, you can see the reasons why every party gave the answers they did, and reading those statements, especially on answer where your party of choice had different answers than your own were very insightful. I somehow doubt that too many people will put that much effort into it, though.

One question where this really stuck out to me was on a speed limit on all highways. One party that I am interested in gave the same answer I did, but their reasoning was superficial and shortsighted. Another small party gave the opposite answer but gave a fairly nuanced and convincing explanation on why they think a policy like that is incomplete.

Comparing the two, the former just sounded like political pandering and I very much hope enough people see through this and don't just give their votes to the top score.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#48

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

belorn wrote: post #41
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much only far-right parties that want to leave the EU nowadays.

Are you talking about Germany only? In Sweden and Norway we have had parties that want to leave EU on both side of the political spectrum. The EU question has many aspects to it, in particular when it comes to fees, democratic control over laws, and voting rights. You need strong incentives to keep smaller countries that pay way more than they get back and which voting impact is dwarfed by larger countries. An argume…

>In Sweden and Norway we have had parties that want to leave EU on both side of the political spectrum.

Norway isn't even in the EU so what gives?

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#49

Post by square_usual »

woodpanel wrote: post #30

It's really odd: In the previous election, you couldn't see/hear one news report about the election without mentioning the Wahl-O-Mat. This election-time it was some internet meme that reminded me it existed. 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 p…

> Some of my migrant friends joked that I should label them a right-winger now.

I don't see how that's odd. Many migrants come from more conservative (in the Western sense) cultures. They can align with the progressive parties because they're afraid of the conservative ones due to their anti-immigrant stances, but that doesn't mean they are progressive.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#50

Post by hef19898 »

belorn wrote: post #41
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much only far-right parties that want to leave the EU nowadays.

Are you talking about Germany only? In Sweden and Norway we have had parties that want to leave EU on both side of the political spectrum. The EU question has many aspects to it, in particular when it comes to fees, democratic control over laws, and voting rights. You need strong incentives to keep smaller countries that pay way more than they get back and which voting impact is dwarfed by larger countries. An argume…

How would Norway leave the EU before joining it in the first place?
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