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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

#61
post #35

Wikipedia has a partial list of similar voting advice applications in other countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_advice_application#See_...

It doesn't really say how common they are in each of these country, and I'd be curious to see that.

From my very limited perception, Stemwijzer and Kieskompas in NL are quite popular (for the young-ish, progressive and tech-inclined generation), more so than similar alternatives in Italy. On the other hand, it seems that in NL there's more openness to vote for a different party at every election - while in Italy the electorate seems more polarized and rigid (in Italy the electoral system is not fully proportional, this has surely a great impact in this). I wonder if the usage of these apps reflects these dynamics .

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

#62
Why are political parties necessary? Instead of chosing representatives in bulk we should decide democratically about each of these particular questions. Then, a professional executive power (elected independently, or simply hired) would be legally bound to implement these decisions.

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

#63

Why are political parties necessary? Instead of chosing representatives in bulk we should decide democratically about each of these particular questions. Then, a professional executive power (elected independently, or simply hired) would be legally bound to implement these decisions.

You can surely see how this could be problematic? Q1: Should we lower taxes? Q2: Should we introduce 5k/month UBI?

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

#64

Can someone post an English translation of the "theses" or questions in the Wahl-o-mat? When I hear about such initiatives I am always wary of this kind of polling manipulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

Here it goes, all are phrased as statements, to which you can agree, be neutral or disagree:

1: There should be a general speed limit on all Autobahn roads.

2: Germany should increase its defense budget.

3: Young adults at the age of 16 should be allowed to vote in federal elections. [current age is 18]

4: Subsidies for wind power turbines should be stopped.

5: Stronger legal limitations for the abilities of landlords to raise the rents.

6: Covid-19 vaccines should stay protected by patents.

7: The planned end date of 2038 for coal power plants should be moved to an earlier date.

8: All working people should have to join the federal pension funds.

9: The right for recognized refugees to have their families following them should be removed.

10: There should be a national tax for revenue resulting from digital services.

11: The traditional family consisting of a farther, mother and children should be stronger supported than other forms of families.

12: Donations from companies to parties should be continued to be allowed.

13: Students should get financial support independant of the income of their parents.

14: It should be generally allowed to have a second nationality besides the German one.

15: Federal administrations should be gender-neutral in all published writings.

16: The North-Stream-2 pipeline transporting gas from Russia to Germany should put into use as planned.

17: The solidaric tax should be completely abolished.

18: It should be generally allowed to wear a head scarf for all federal employees during their duty.

19: Buying of new cars with combustion engines should be allowed into the far future.

20: The federal government should have more authority about school politics.

21: The federal government should support more projects to fight antisemitism.

22: Chinese companies should not get contracts for expanding the communication infrastructure in Germany.

23: The state should continue to collect taxes for religious organizations.

24: The controlled sale of Cannabis should be allowed generally.

25: Germany should exit the EU.

26: The candidate lists of the parties should be equally filled with women and men.

27: Hospitals should continue to be paid a fixed fee per case.

28: There should be a tax for large properties.

29: It should be allowed to use face recognition software on video surveillance feeds of public places.

30: Married couples without children should continue to get tax exceptions [like those with children]

31: Biological agriculture should be getting stronger support than conventional.

32: Islamic organizations should be recognized as religious organizations by the federal state.

33: The taxes on CO2 for heating and driving should raise quicker than planned.

34: The constitutional limit on public debt should be unchanged.

35: Asylum should be continued to be granted only for political prosecuted.

36: The minimum wage should be raised to 12€ in 2022.

37: There should be higher taxes on air travel.

38: Companies should decide on their own whether they want to allow home office.

Some where quite difficult to translate to keep the tone, and a lot might require some more background to understand. I have tried my best to be faithful, overall I would say they are phrased very neutral, though with a lot of statements it is immediately obvious, from which party line they would come from.

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

#65
post #44
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I like your reasoning. In the end (within reason) I do not care how the laws are implemented, I am voting for the party, which matches what I would like to implement.

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

#66
post #59

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…

> 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 progressive enough, thus hitting poorer people harder than rich people. But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction? If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and…

> But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction?

You cannot find a party that you agree with 100%. If you have to choose the lesser evil, you may still want to check why exactly a party disagrees with you.

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

#67

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.

[deleted]

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

#68
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.

The Socialist Party in the Netherlands more or less wants to leave the E.U..

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

#69
post #2

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.

> it only looks at what parties claim they will do, not their historical voting record.

In multi part parliametary systems, parties will form governments and small party A has to be prepared to vote against their program or election promise, because that's the concession they had to make to rule in coalition with party B.

Basically all the programs and promises has the form "if we get a majority ourselves and the budget allows then..." but that effectivley never happens. So it's all ambition. Some things can be expressed as promises e.g."we'll never allow X to happen or rule in coalition with Y, we'd rather topple the government and call new elections if that was on the table". If parties fail to live up to that, there is (rightfully) a discussion about broken promises. But otherwise, I think it's rare to see parties say one thing and vote another.

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

#70
post #59

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…

> 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 progressive enough, thus hitting poorer people harder than rich people. But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction? If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and…

> If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and one who believes in climate change but is unwilling to do anything about it

That's obviously not the distinction between the parties here. The second one intends (or at least has a policy to) do something about it, but just not by raising the existing CO2 tax. Maybe instead they intend to raise the top rate of income tax and increase subsidies for public transport.

If you incorporated all of the parties policies into the Wahl-O-Mat, that would all come out in the wash and you'd end up with your preferred party, but also you might abandon the process because it's taking too long.

The challenge is to distil the parties' policies into a reasonable subset that accurately captures the differences between them, some kind of principal component analysis.

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