Mierscheid Law

The Mierscheid-Law is a hypothesis, published in the July 14 1983 issue of the German "Vorwärts" magazine, attributed to fictitious politician Jakob Maria Mierscheid, which forecasts the vote of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) based on the size of crude steel production in Western Germany. [cite web | url = http://www.bundestag.de/mdbhome/miersja0/mierscheid_gesetz.pdf
title = 19 Jahre Mierscheid-Gesetz – ein ungerades Jubiläum und die Aussichten der SPD bei der Bundestagswahl (19 Years of the Mierscheid Law an odd numbered anniversary and the chances of the SPD in the national parliamentary elections)|accessdate = 2007-05-26
author = Jakob Mierscheid, Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages | authorlink = Jakob Maria Mierscheid
date = 2002-03-20 |format=pdf|publisher = German Parliament, Platz der Republik, 11011 Berlin
language = German| quote = Die Formulierung des Mierscheid-Gesetzes selber lautet: „Der Stimmenanteil der SPD richtet sich nach dem Index der deutschenRohstahlproduktion – gemessen in Mio. Tonnen – im jeweiligen Jahr derBundestagswahl.“ (The formulation of the Mierscheid Law is as follows: The proportion of votes for the SPD depends on the index of German crude steel production measured in millions of metric tons in the corresponding year.) ]

:"The Vote share of the SPD equals the Index of the crude steel production in the western federal states - measured in million tonnes - in the year of the federal election."

There is a special rule for early elections. One then has to take the arithmetic mean of the regular and early year of election.

The last corroboration of the law was in the 2002 election [cite web | url = http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,362874,00.html | title = Warum die SPD die Wahl gewinnt (Why the SPD will win the election) | accessdate = 2007-01-11
author = Yassin Musharbash| date = 2005-06-29| work = Spiegel Online| language = German] , where the West German crude steel production was 38.6 million tonnes, and the vote share of the SPD 38.5%. For the early election in 2005 the vote share was 38.4%, with a mean crude steel value of 40.0 million tonnes. Over the last 10 elections, the two values were within 2 units 9 times, and within 1 unit 7 times.

Possible refutation of the hypothesis in 2005

In the German federal elections of 18 September, 2005 (which were originally due to be held in 2006), the law appeared not to hold, since the SPD obtained 34.3 % of the relevant votes while the crude steel production of the "old" "Länder" (i.e. those states that belonged to the Federal Republic of Germany before reunification) in the previous year was 39.9 million tonnes. However, an article attributed to the legendary Jakob Mierscheid, published on the German Federal Parliament's Web site provided a correction to the hypothesis, to take account of the special situation. Since the elections had been brought forward, it was argued that the last months of the year should be discounted, yielding a steel production figure of 33.5 million tonnes. The graph included in the article showed a good match, thus supporting the (corrected) hypothesis. [cite web
url = http://www.bundestag.de/mdb/mierscheid/2005_12_05_hypothese.pdf
title = Vorläufige Hypothese zum Mierscheid-Gesetz (Preliminary hypothesis on the Mierscheid Law) | accessdate = 2007-01-11| author = The legendary Jakob Mierscheid, MdB | authorlink = Jakob Maria Mierscheid | coauthors = | date = 2005-12-13| format = pdf| work = | publisher = Official Web site of the German Bundestag| language = German| quote = ]

Following the 2005 elections, an article was published by the statistical office of the state of Baden-Württemberg attempting to further refine the model in the form of the Mierscheid-Walla Law. This article also mentions promising but inconclusive attempts to replace steel production with other measures that exhibited a degree of apparent correlation, such as the export value of automobiles, employment levels in the field of legal advice, the price of coffee, and the number of accidents on town roads. [cite web | url = http://www.statistik-portal.de/Veroeffentl/Monatshefte/PDF/Beitrag06_03_09.pdf | title = Das Mierscheid-Walla-Gesetz (The Mierscheid-Walla Law)| accessdate = 2007-01-11| author = Jakob Maria Mierscheid (the legend) | authorlink = Jakob Maria Mierscheid | coauthors = Wolfgang Walla | year = 2006 | month = March | format = pdf | work = Statistisches Monatsheft Baden-Württemberg 3/2006 | publisher = Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder (Statistical offices of the German federal government and the states)| language = German]

References

Further reading (German)

*cite book | last = Sperling | first = Dietrich
authorlink = | coauthors = Friedhelm Wollner
title = Jakob Mierscheid. Aus dem Leben eines Abgeordneten. Eine politische Holografie (Jakob Mierscheid. From the life of a member of parliament. A political holography)| year = 1998 | month = June | publisher = Nomos | location = | isbn = 3789054844 de icon