Re: German election

David Dahlberg wrote: 
Paul Schmitz-Josten schrieb:


I've been reading all the news coverage, and I have one question: In order
to form a government, does a coalition have to have an absolute majority,
meaning over 50%?


As Thomsen said, an absolute majority _of seats_ is strongly desired.
Today, none of the primary blocks (red-green or black-yellow) has one.


By the way, me personally I have no problem in with a Government
*without* an own majority in parliament. The souvereign electing the parliament, electing the chancellor,
appointing the Government which on the other side now holds control
over the coalition fractions -- and therefore over the parliament
isn't exactly what I understand as democracy. It doesn't really fit
the idea of seperation of powers, too.

What's so bad in having a "weak" government (with no power base in
Bundestag) and a parliament that has to balance interests to
organize majorities?

So why not Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger or Rita Süssmuth
for chancellor in an all-party/small-power government? ;-)


2002: 603 seats
SPD	251
CDU/CSU	248
Greens	55
FDP	47
PDS	2	(these were directly elected candidates)

As you can see, SPD was the strongest party, thus given the right to build
the government,



SPD in the social-liberal coalition under Brandt and the CDU in the
first period of the christ-liberal coalition under Kohl weren't the
strongest parties either.


and SPD + Greens had 306 seats, thus an absolute majority. 


That's the point ;-)


<snip>

I'm just
trying to understand how the system works.

So do many Germans and fail, as the current "second vote" campaign of FDP
shows. 


Vote splitting may be quite effective if you'd like to "optimize"
the weight of your vote. The second vote is the most important vote
on the one hand, but on the other hand in some cases more second
votes might result in lesser seats for one party (a so called
"negative vote weight").
One example: If CDU gets more than 41.226 in the by-election in
Dresden, they're losing one excess mandate. (More vote arithmetics
on http://www.wahlrecht.de/)

It is a very complicated system indeed and I'm quite sure hardly
anyone in Germany understands it in detail, too ;-)


David 

Not more mind-boggling than the Bush vs. Gore election, isn't it :-)
A.

.

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