‘WahlSwiper’ for the local elections

What is Party X’s attitude to the fees for public service broadcasting? What does it think about fixing rents for social housing? And what does Party Y think about legalizing cannabis? The ‘WahlSwiper’ voting aid will help citizens of Bremen decide how to cast their vote in the upcoming local elections on 26^th May 2019. The free online service was first used in the 2017 national elections and has also been used in Hesse, Bavaria and Lower Saxony. Freiburg political scientist Prof. Dr. Uwe Wagschal is cooperating on the tool with the Berlin agency Movact which developed the app and web application.

The WahlSwiper covers a total of 32 questions which have been answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ by all sixteen parties that are putting up candidates. The questions look at a range of state and local issues such as development, migration and public transport. None of the questions was answered unanimously by all six of the parties currently represented in the Bundestag. The CDU, SPD, FDP, die Linke and Greens agreed on five questions – including on the question of an upper limit of 30 percent for school pupils with a migration background in a class. All five parties answered no to this. The AfD answered the question with a yes.

As in the previous analyses for the national and regional elections, the Greens and the former Communist party die Linke agreed the most at 78 per cent, followed by the socialist party the SPD and the Greens at 75 per cent. The least agreement was between the Greens and the AfD and die Linke and the AfD.

Uwe Wagschal, who also helped to develop the Debat-O-Meter and other electoral tools, is the Professor of Comparative Governmental Teaching at the University of Freiburg. His team developed the questions together with Prof. Dr. Herbert Obinger and Prof. Dr. Lothar Probst from the University of Bremen.

‘WahlSwiper’ for the Bremen local elections