What if....no 5%-hurdle in the FRG?

[freivolk]

Except that FPTP is for many Germans the most undemocratic system short of outright dictatorship imaginable. I believe both Heuss and Adenauer, the closest the FRG had to founding fathers, said as much. It allows to form a government against the will of a majority of the voters. There will be people alive remembering how it was used in Imperial Germany successfully to keep the SPD from gaining the share of seats it deserved. It is also the perfect example that it not always reduces the number of parties. All parties had regional strong points and in a more splintered party landscape of the early FRG that might well remain the case.

I don´t think most Germans really put much thought in such electoral question.
And I don´t think that I ever heard, that Adenauer said anything against the FPTP-system. And if he did it, it could be some typical Adenauer-"why I should care about the stupid things I said yesterday"-thing. After all the CDU tried since the Fifties to introduce a FPTP system and this attempts didn´t ended till 1969.

 

[historyfool]

I don´t think most Germans really put much thought in such electoral question.
And I don´t think that I ever heard, that Adenauer said anything against the FPTP-system. And if he did it, it could be some typical Adenauer-"why I should care about the stupid things I said yesterday"-thing. After all the CDU tried since the Fifties to introduce a FPTP system and this attempts didn´t ended till 1969.

Most people probably don´t think about it on a regular base. After all our system works well enough most times. But if the question arises they would be against it.
And here is the Adenauer quote I thought about. He made it 1967 in reaction to the plans to introduce FPTP. "Ein Wahlrecht nach britischem Muster halte ich für nicht gut, ein Zweiparteiensystem erscheint mir nicht ohne weiteres erstrebenswert." (I do not consider a voting system following the British pattern good, a two party system just like that doesn´t seem desireable to me). Source is an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt from January 4th 1967. Considering that he did never push for it himself, as chancellor or otherwise, I think one can consider it his honest opinion. For Theodor Heuss I found his words only quoted in a Spiegel article in 11/67. He called plurality vote the greatest con imaginable (denkbar größten Schwindel).

 

[pternagy]

In a FPTP you vote for people , human beeing not a politcal Party. This political parties get all the same number of votes O !

Yes, because the list of nonpartisan democracies using FPTP vastly outnumbers the number of partisan states.

And because no politician elected by FPTP ever votes along party lines unless the party line just happens to be the same as the wishes of his constituents.

And because no politician elected with a minority of votes in an FPTP election decides to change his political party or his votes to conform to the wishes of the two guys who collectively had a majority of the votes but both had fewer personal votes them him.

Oh wait....that's not how it works.

The only thing worse than first past the post is gerrrymandered first past the post. And the only thing worse than that is a dictatorship.

 

[AMF]

This list is a good argument for the threshold in itself.

You probably mean something like: all these small parties are a bunch of loonies, so it's a good thing they are excluded from parliament completely. I agree in so far, as the present OTL "splinter parties", as well as Afd and the Pirates, do not have valuable contributions to make to the political scene. But this is partly the result of the very 5% hurdle that is under discussion here. If there were no hurdle of this type, or a much lower one, then a lot more talented and intelligent people would join small parties, with the view of making them big parties one day. As it is, the very fact that the 5% hurdle exists, takes care that only extremists or people who like to be one of the biggest fish in a very unimportant pond join the small parties.

 

[Julius Vogel]

Nz has had two recent referendums over a decade where MMP has been first selected then retained, so it can be that people do understand and support electoral systems

 

[freivolk]

Back to topic.

So lets assume there will be no national 5%-hurdle in the FRG and it stays the Länder-based hurdlé.
Reason for this could be, that the Constitutional Court strikes the national hurdle down
or that in the first Adenauer-goverment the smaller partners FDP and DP (Deutsche Partei right-conservative regional party based in Lower Saxony) block a national hurdle and Adenauer accepts this (propably because he thinks it better to keep some small rightwing parties around, you never knows when you need them)

Changes in 1953
The Bayernpartei (BP) stays in Bundestag. The DP doesn´t need help by the CDU and stays a bit more independent.

Changes in 1957
The BHE (Refuge-party) stays in Bundestag. Adenauer will propably doesn´t get a absolute majority and will be more dependent of the DP as coalition-partner. The DP survive as an independent party past 1960.

IOTL BP and BHE stayed a factor in the Länder till the early Sixties. So it seems possible that they survive and still pass the 5%-hurdle at least in one Land. ITTL the same seems possible for the DP. In the Saarland a party of the fomer Automist may survive.

Changes in1961
Smaller parties will invest lot of money and engergy in smaller Länder like Bremen and Saarland to get in the Bundestag. Maybe the Deutsche Friedensunion (DFU-procommunist) will be succesfull.
Adenauer will propably try to form a coalition with the DP and the BHE, to avoid a coalition with the FDP, so he stays (barly) in power till 1965.

Changes in 1965
The SPD forms a coalition with FDP, BHE and BP. Chancellor is Willy Brandt. Because the BHE still demands the Borders of 1937, there is no new Ostpoitik. After a short recession in 1966/67 the coalition falls apart. A Great Coalition is formed with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Vice Chancellor Franz Josef Strauß. In the Länder the rightextremist NPD becomes more and more successfull. Its obvious they will be in the Bundestag in 1969. The Coalition pass a new electoral law based on the FPTP-system.

1969
The first federal election with the FPTP-system.
Who may win?

 

[freivolk]

bump.....bump

 

[Detlef]

That may be the case but how democratic is the system now with a party having 42% of the vote having nearly the mayority of the seat in the Bundestag?
And about 10% of the vote doesn´t count at all ?

And how can a party with just 35.2% of the votes get an absolute majority in parliament?
United Kingdom general election 2005 for example.

The FPTP system in a worst case scenario allows 49.9% of the voters not to be represented after all.

 

[pternagy]

The FPTP system in a worst case scenario allows 49.9% of the voters not to be represented after all.

No there are far worse cases than that. Far, far worse.

Imagine that three equal parties get virtually equal shares of the vote and bring in 33% of the votes in each district. But one party gets one more vote in each district than the other two. That one party, with 33% of the vote gets 100% of the seats and the other 66% of the voters get diddly squat.

Now imagine there are four parties, or five, or six.

Or Papua New Guinea where there are effectively no parties and each MP tries to bring home pork spending to appeal to just enough people to get the most votes in their districts.

Or Singapore where the PAP still gets a healthy majority every election but manages to get at least 90% of the seats.

Or Australia, technically not FPTP, where the Greens consistently outvote the Nationals but the Nationals earn 8 times as many House seats because their votes are concentrated or the Greens are not. Or the Greens in Canada and England.

First past the post does not bring effective local representation. First past the post does not bring stable majority government. First past the post does bring meaningful local elections fought on local issues.

First past the post brings power to politicians ensconced in safe districts and power to small interest groups that bring a plurality. First past the post distorts the polls so that a small group brings the illusion of a majority. First past the post reduces a national election to a handful of separate contests in a handful of swing districts. No one else has a vote that matters because they live in a district where the winner is a foregone conclusion, even if a majority in his own district is against him.

 

[Hörnla]

That may be the case but how democratic is the system now with a party having 42% of the vote having nearly the mayority of the seat in the Bundestag?

I fully agree, but it is harmless when compared to a scenario of a FPTP-Germany. With Sunday's numbers, the CDU/CSU won 236 of 299 "Direktmandate" which are the FPTP-element of our electoral system.

And how about the UK? The last elections allowed the Tories to turn 36% of the votes into 47% of seats, Labours 29% translate into ca. 39% of seats wheras 23% LibDem-voters are rewarded with less than 9% of the seats. I simply see no justification for what in the end is a random translation of individual voters into Parliamentary representation.

And about 10% of the vote doesn´t count at all ?

For a long time, while the Germans dutifully voted for the established parties, this quota was at 1-3%, but it has risen in the more complex modern times...
Actually, it is worse than 10% but at 15.8%- reason enough to discuss the hurdle being at 5%. The taste for more and different (and inevitably smaller) parties arises because that's how our society and our lifestyles develop in more directions.

One has to admit, that most of these 15% could very well expect to see their favourites in the Bundestag. The FDP had never defaulted like that before, and the AfD was at 4-4.5% in the polls during the last week before the election. Both parties narrowly failed to get across the hurdle. In a FPTP-caused two-party-system, the percentage of non-represented voters would be lower just because (as a self-fulfilling prophecy), it can in most cases not be expected that such a vote turns into representation.

as such a result would likely lead to the abolition of the electoral college.

No it wouldn't. ;-) They're stuck.

In a FPTP you vote for people , human beeing not a politcal Party.

In theory, that is correct; and the individual aspect of FPTP is definitely a degree stronger than in the German system. I agree that one should change the system in order to strengthen the individual personalitites running within the idea of proportional representation (I need to have a closer look at the Austrian system).

Seriously, how many Britons fully base their vote on the character and performance of their MP-candidates and don't think for a moment which camp shall govern the country and who should become Prime Minister?

And in the US, how well served are they (at present) with this system which is "electing human beings"? The dissatisfaction with their politicians (which we in Germany call "Politikverdrossenheit") is massive!

I don´t think most Germans really put much thought in such electoral question.

Unless someone would try to change it. The latter matter would have created a lot less uproar in the past when there were really two huge "Volksparteien" with the SPD and CDU/CSU; the situation would at present be somewhat different.

First past the post reduces a national election to a handful of separate contests in a handful of swing districts. No one else has a vote that matters because they live in a district where the winner is a foregone conclusion, even if a majority in his own district is against him.

I noticed that strongly during the reports about the last US presidential election. Has this always been a problem, or is it being emphasized in recent decades the more professional spin and campaigning are orchestrated?

I don't have the time at present to come up with what I think could be a possible development from 1953-2013. But I will start to ponder that.