State of the Union: Germany's border politics and US election campaign fever

[Music] hello and welcome to State of the Union I'm Stefan Gro in Brussels the recent gains of the farri right in Regional elections in East Germany continued to make waves this week not that anything productive came out of the ranks of the afd party the alternative for Germany it was rather the center-left Coalition of Chancellor Olaf Schultz trying to seize back the initiative in an attempt to further crack down on illegal immigration Germany is now tightening controls at its borders undermining at least for 6 months the shenen system Europe's Visa free area of unrestricted movement this in reaction to a 33% rise in illegal border crossings according to the latest official numbers with this move Berlin hopes to win back voters in the next Regional election in East Germany a week from now meanwhile the latest row between the EU commission and Hungary over immigration is about to escalate Budapest vowed to retaliation for a 200 million euro fine imposed by the European court of justice over hungary's treatment of Asylum Seekers Budapest threats trigger sharp criticism from Belgium and the EU commission no bus transfer has taken place yet and there might never happen at all yet the recent sharp focus on immigration shows how the rise of populism in elections in Europe throughout the year is influencing the political debate speaking of debate in the United States where far-right populism is making another run at the presidency Donald Trump and camela Harris faced off in what was probably their only televised debate PS taken immediately afterwards saw Harris as the clear winner but the race remains tight a race both campaigns have claimed is all important for the survival of democracy joining me now is Ben anel political scientist at the University of Oxford host of the podcast what's wrong with democracy and author of why politics fails welcome to the program thank you so so much for having me stepan so is democracy in Decline and do the elections of 2024 so far reflect that this year 4 billion people went to the polls to vote half of them in countries with free and fair elections and for the most part the results of those elections should encourage us so for example in turkey erdogan has has not succeeded in in controlling some of the local cities so he's sort of on the defense narandra Modi again a fair and free election but one that people thought he was going to dominate and strengthen he did worse than expected last year pis in Poland finally lost so actually in lots of places where we were concerned that democracy might be weakening it hasn't um let's let's focus on the US presidential elections uh being just around the corner um are identity politics something typically American and misinformation tearing democracy apart the kind of identity politics that that is used in misinformation that people get excited about has always been with us right people have always voted by their demographics you know what we're seeing in the US election with Hispanic and African-American voting looks pretty similar to 2008 maybe also to the 1990s right so the fact that people vote their identities is nothing new in American politics what's new maybe is the polarization in the media around that there um has been a special Focus this year on firsttime voters um in the US what can we expect from them in the presidential elections KLA Harris has a lead among younger Americans and that's where she's really um changed the narrative from Joe Biden Biden actually did very well maybe not surprisingly among senior citizens in America uh cut into Trump's Edge there uh but he lost a lot of young voters concerned about Gaza yes but also concerned about inflation concerned about the housing market and concerned about voting for somebody in their 80s and so I suspect that we will see many more young people out to vote uh than we would have done with Biden and then in most recent elections there's also a growing gender divide when it comes to voting uh women voting differently than men um how do you explain this it's always been true that women and men have have voted differently but what is new about today is that the gender gap is just enormous right so right now it looks like uh there's a 20o gender gap so if you like Harris is sort of plus 10 with men and uh with women and Trump is plus 10 with men so that's a huge difference now women turn out to vote more so actually that's an inbuilt advantage for Kamala Harris why is that happening more this election maybe because of having a woman on the ballot I think more likely because of abortion all right Ben anel professor at the University of Oxford thanks for helping us understand this complex issue appreciate it thank you so much for having me one issue that voters are particularly interested in is according to polls climate change the reason is that more and more people experience firsthand extreme weather events or other phenomena like sinkholes most recently an area in central turkey is troubled by the proliferation of sinkholes up to more than 2,600 what caused most of them is drought and uncontrolled use of underground water typical consequences of climate change Turkish Emergency Management authorities are closely monitoring the development of the giant holes looking for ways to prevent their formation now if you feel the ground beneath you is going away don't panic the collapse process is usually so gradual that you can leave the affected area safely that's it for this Edition I'm Stefan grber thank you for watching have an excellent week