Rally with Piratenpartei flags and a Hamburg flag near center. Photo by Zam_Pano@FlickR, CC license.

Congratulations, Piratenpartei Hamburg

Pirate Parties

Piratenpartei Hamburg performed a feat today. In local state elections, they surpassed two percent with more than 70,000 votes.

This is a tremendous feat. Anybody can succeed once, like a flash in the pan. But to stay at a level and climb from there requires perseverance, method and strategy. This was never a sprint, it has always been a marathon.

The German Piratenpartei (PPDE) scored two percent in a federal election to the Bundestag right after the Swedish Piratpartiet’s (PPSE) entry into the European Parliament in 2009, when everybody was euphoric and felt undefeatable forever. Well, reality is harsher than that. There’s no tougher time than the day after you’ve been the hip thing of the town.

Therefore, being able to repeat this result in early 2011 is a very, very good effort and shows excellent promise for PPDE and the pirate movement at large. In particular in a local election, where campaigns typically aren’t very well funded.

It’s true that this result doesn’t give any seats in the local parliaments. Nevertheless, it’s great winnage. I also note that Piratenpartei Hamburg became the largest challenger party by a wide margin, beating the far right.

Gratulation zu diesem Job wirklich gut gemacht, Piratenpartei Hamburg, und viel Glück für die Zukunft.

UPDATE: Suchenwi points out in the comments that the result may be enough for local district assemblies, due to local peaks, even though it wasn’t enough for the Bürgerschaft when summarized across Hamburg. We will know more about the local district assemblies tomorrow.

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About The Author: Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky.

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suchenwi

February 20, 2011 - 22:03

It’s true that 2% don’t result in a seat in the state parliament (Bürgerschaft), but simultaneously there was a vote for district assemblies, where a 3% threshold applies, and in Hamburg-Mitte (center) this could well be topped.. Results are probably in tomorrow, as they count the Bürgerschaft votes first, and altogether 20 votes per voter :O

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Rick Falkvinge

February 20, 2011 - 22:08

Whee! That’s excellent news.

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Rick Falkvinge

February 20, 2011 - 22:09

Also, I must admit I don’t know if the German at the end is correct. I trusted Google Translate. :)

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  mmarsching
  
  February 20, 2011 - 22:50
  
  It is not perfectly correct, but good enough to be well understood :)
  
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Tweets that mention Congratulations, Piratenpartei Hamburg - Falkvinge on Infopolicy -- Topsy.com

February 21, 2011 - 02:07

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Falkvinge, Falkvinge, Johan S, Arnd Klinkhart, Piratpartiet Live! and others. Piratpartiet Live! said: Falkvinge on Infopolicy: Congratulations, Piratenpartei Hamburg: Piratenpartei Hamburg performed a feat t… http://tinyurl.com/4jzxqq7 [...]

Scary Devil Monastery

February 21, 2011 - 11:06

Well, having lived in Germany myself I can testify that the current generation vividly remembers “Die Mauer” and the STASI of the DDR.

Thus the soil may be far more fertile in Germany for the pirate party than it would be in many other european countries. Such as Sweden where the majority of the citizenry still seems to think “Swedish Democracy” is strong enough to bear some dismantling of civil rights…