The Augsburger Allgemeine published Simon Bein's assessment of the current Sunday poll in Bavaria and the Bavarian SPD's low in the polls: To the article! (external link, opens in a new window) Bavarian state politics stands out here due to the strong regional party CSU and its right-of-centre coalition option (beyond the AfD) with the Free Voters. However, structural problems of social democracy exist in Bavaria as well as in other states.
The East Bavarian cultural magazine lichtung (external link, opens in a new window)has published a guest commentary by Simon Bein on the local elections in East Bavaria in March 2026. Local elections have long since lost their status as second- or third-class elections. In times of party-political polarisation, the weakness of many established parties and the question of cooperation with the AfD, the great challenges of democracy are particularly evident here on a "small scale".
An interview on the under-representation of women in local politics and the general challenges of unequal representation at the various levels of representative democracy appeared in the Straubinger Tagblatt (external link, opens in a new window) on Wednesday, 11 February (p. 13 of the print edition).