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

politico.eu

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

#131

Post by RalfWausE »

slightwinder wrote: post #110
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. Did they get something like AFD or NPD as top-choices?

The funny thing i observed is: Especially immigrants from (former) communist countries (at least in my peer group) are tending more towards AfD instead of more left leaning parties.

My wife, originating out of Vietnam has studied in germany, has now full citizenship and is working here would rather vote for the AfD then anything left of the CDU. Why? Because the memory of $left_leaning_party = communism = bad living circumstances are too deep engrainend in her mind.

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

#132

Post by Sebb767 »

Avalaxy wrote: post #85
yorwba wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just skip questions you don't want to answer.

You can, but probably most people don't do this, as they see themselves as a subject-matter expert on every topic, based on their gut feeling.

But it's not Wahl-o-mats job to fix people. It wants to help people choose a party.

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

#133

Post by gurkendoktor »

soco wrote: post #112
ud_0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wahlomat was a great starting point for me as someone who is not up-to-date on current party agendas. However, its weakness is that it breaks down answers into yes/no options. For me there were lots of items that required more than that (for example: I was looking for parties who reject the premise of a given question - I would have loved a graphical indicator for those cases). But I have to say, drilling down to get…

I would always assume that when a single-issue party gets elected, they would push mostly on that issue. Because if someone sympathizes with the Pirates, they do because of the core message, not because of their social policies (which any party is required to answer but some care less)

Speaking of the German Pirate Party, I found it interesting that I haven't seen a single election poster about technology or direct democracy this year. The ones I saw were exclusively about the 1.5° climate goal, the gender wage gap, and another social topic that I forgot. Not sure if that's an actual strategy, or just the preferred way to empty their wallets while they have no chance to cross the frustrating 5% firewall anyway.

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

#134

Post by Popegaf »

> The lesson? There’s no tool, however well designed, that can bring pure reason to politics.

The whole article is just slamming an attempt at improving the situation without suggesting any improvements. It's the typical "Hah! Look! They tried! Idiots!".

Do you think you're going to be able to convince the bricklayer, that just came back home after 8 hours of work and 2 total hours in traffic, to spend several hours reading up on a party's + candidate's history, political stance, ideology, scandals, in-depth interviews, program, and so on an so forth for every party available?

We should be happy that these things at least exist and try to aid people when making these decisions, instead of belittling them (the tools and their makers) and calling the whole thing futile. At least there are attempts to counter (at least a little bit) the deluge of opinions, misquotes, misinformation, faux news, deception and lies, that are spread, facilitated and guided on and by social networks.

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

#135

Post by metters »

oaiey wrote: post #124
patates wrote: post #6

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...

This is a respond to a ultra-right-wing party AfD which "hangs greens" in some districts.

Not AfD, but The Third Way (Der dritte Weg). They are even more radical than AfD.

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

#136

Post by oaiey »

davidkunz wrote: post #77

The problem with Wahl-O-Mat is that only questions are displayed for which all parties provided an answer. Let's say there's a right-wing party wanting to deport all foreigners. But they want a tempo limit, want to invest in wind energy, etc... In the end you could end up with a lot of (false!) agreement.

Well, there is priority options for questions and you should review the results on individual questions (which is a separate page).

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

#137

Post by gurkendoktor »

oaiey wrote: post #124
patates wrote: post #6

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...

This is a respond to a ultra-right-wing party AfD which "hangs greens" in some districts.

The "hang Nazis" posters are from the previous election [1], while "hang greens" is a new slogan from this cycle [2]. If I had to guess, I'd say that the party was hoping for the "hang greens" posters to be banned so that they could whine about the "hang nazis" posters being unfairly allowed.

Not AfD by the way, but "Der Dritte Weg", a party that I learned about through the Wahl-O-Mat.

[1] https://www.welt.de/regionales/nrw/article163830133/Hier-koe... [2] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/landgericht-verbietet-e...

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

#138

Post by jillesvangurp »

gigatexal wrote: post #128

At current polls it'll be SPD/CDU/Greens. Good. The AfD is a bunch of nazis anyway.

SPD, Greens, FDP also looks like a possibility. A government without CDU would be unprecedented in Germany. And IMHO not a bad thing.

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

#139

Post by MagnumOpus »

soco wrote: post #112
ud_0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wahlomat was a great starting point for me as someone who is not up-to-date on current party agendas. However, its weakness is that it breaks down answers into yes/no options. For me there were lots of items that required more than that (for example: I was looking for parties who reject the premise of a given question - I would have loved a graphical indicator for those cases). But I have to say, drilling down to get…

I would always assume that when a single-issue party gets elected, they would push mostly on that issue. Because if someone sympathizes with the Pirates, they do because of the core message, not because of their social policies (which any party is required to answer but some care less)

It's a sensible assumption to make, but unfortunately it doesn't happen that way.

A successful single-issue party that has ill-defined goals in other areas is a ripe target for people pushing other single-issue agendas to insinuate those into the party programme.

In my view this caused the death of the German Pirate Party - the initial impression of "generally centrist, but competent and uncompromising on tachnology/IP/privacy" among the electorate was quickly shifted to "wokesters and economic leftists who are way more extreme than even the Left Party" because the initial members were infiltrated and supplanted by leftist political activists...

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

#140

Post by gurkendoktor »

Avalaxy wrote: post #85
yorwba wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just skip questions you don't want to answer.

You can, but probably most people don't do this, as they see themselves as a subject-matter expert on every topic, based on their gut feeling.

I actually skipped or voted neutral on several important macro questions because I hadn't made up my mind yet, such as how to deal with national debt. However, I have an opinion on comparatively simple issues such as the use of inclusive language. The result was that tiny culture war parties lead the list in my Wahl-o-Mat results. Technically correct, but not great because this is the process that leads to polarization about fringe issues.
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