As I write the German Federal elections are underway. Much of the comment I’ve heard is that the contest has been boring. If journalists only knew how boring they are when they say elections are boring!
I did hear one report this evening that although it was a splendidly fine day in Berlin the turnout was only down about 5% on the high mark of 78% in 2005.
I don’t have any special insights, so this post is intended to introduce the topic so that we can share perspectives and sources.
The polls slightly favoured Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU holding onto power with a chance of being able to form a coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP). This would enable her to get on with “economic reform” unhindered by the her grand Coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD). But there has apparently been a late swing the other way for the very same reason. Some are worried about social safety nets and soaking the poor.
So the latest is that the margin will be “wafer thin”. In fact the election could be decided by overhang seats.
So far the Left Party has been considered untouchable as a coalition partner. But the Left Party has been growing precisely because the SPD has been seen as moving too far to the right. The SPD have said “no way” but that’s what they would say before the election. Their tune may well be different tomorrow morning. Such a coalition would have to include the Greens also and a key factor may well be participation in the Afghan war. Here’s one commentator who thinks such a coalition is better for democracy than the Grand Coalition option.
On climate change the only difference I have been able to discern is that the SPD are definitely going to phase out nukes by 2020 whereas Merkel wants to delay.
Der Spiegel has electoral coverage here. Deutsche Welle has stories on the front page at the moment. Here’s the BBC coverage.
Update: Not wafer thin at all in the event. Deutsche Welle has a graphic giving Merkel with the FDP winning 331/625 seats. A news report this morning gave her 323. Angela Merkel looks pleased. The SPD achieved its lowest ever vote – all the other main parties advanced. The FDP result was the best ever; the Left Party continues to advance.
Update 2: Thanks to Wombo @ 17, here is a detailed table of the election results from Der Spiegel and, below, graphics of same:
There are state by state breakdowns here. Please find Wikipedia results here.
The number of voters who voted was 6.8% lower. In terms of share, constituency votes were up by about 2% for the CDU with a corresponding decrease for the SPD.
Looks like we will see a CDU-FDP coalition, good news for stability and reform.
Ironic however, the leader of the FDP and the next vice Chancellor is openly gay
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“Ironic however, the leader of the FDP and the next vice Chancellor is openly gay”
Unless this comment was meant to be ironic, it’s not ironic at all. The FDP is a socially liberal party that supports free markets.
Left vote up to 12.5%, Green vote up to 10.5%, SPD vote down to 22.5%. All in all, the SPD is the only significant party to go backwards in the election, and it did that in a big way. Some serious soul-searching would seem to be in order.
Sam, they will be going into Coalition with perhaps the most socially conservative major party in Germany? Unless I am incorrect. I don’t know how socially conservative they are in comparison with the Australian political system however.
Nothing wrong with it. I think the CSU/CDU/FDP coalition is a real winner.
The CDU and especially the CSU are socially conservative. But being a coalition partner in a German government doesn’t imply subservience.
Correct Sam, nor did I imply subservience.
All I was thinking was the possibility of it ruffling the feathers of a few CDU/CSU hardliners behind closed doors.
Just checked the results on Der Spiegel. The SPD, so determined not to associate with the far left that they went into coalition with the right, have pissed off their base and suffered a slaughter at the polls. Most mainstream commentary has focussed on Merkel’s popularity and that’s probably all most media outlets will talk about. However, her party basically stagnated in its share of the vote despite SPD voters staying home (the main cause, most say, of the reduced turnout). Instead she’s lost votes to the right – to a genuine Thatcher in Guido whatshisface from the FDP.
The SDP vote is now effectively the same as the combined vote for the Linke and the Greens. The Linke’s vote (for those who like to combine history with psephology) is now in the range of the votes that the old KPD got under Weimar. It would be interesting to see if Adam Carr produces an electoral map for this election similar enough to the ones he created for Weimar elections so that we can compare where the two parties (KPD & Linke) got their votes. Was it from the same regions? We know at least that Berlin was/is the main stronghold of both parties.
Paul observes: “Left vote up to 12.5%, Green vote up to 10.5%, SPD vote down to 22.5%. All in all, the SPD is the only significant party to go backwards in the election…”
ABC News says: “Merkel wins new term as left loses support” http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/28/2697883.htm
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From which I infer that Paul and ABC News have different definitions of ‘left’
Paul was refering to a party called “the Left” whereas the ABC was referring to the left in it’s generic sense – including the palest of pink specimins a millimetre to the rigt of centre.
Robert, it is said that the Left Party is breaking out of its East German origins, especially at state level. I heard the guy from Süddeutscher Zeitung this morning who agreed that the loss of SPD votes was mainly through voters staying home.
I gather that whatshisface, Guido Westerwelle, is going to be foreign minister. Deutsche Welle says:
So he’s been around for a while. Merkel has a pretty no-nonsense style which has served her well domestically and internationally. There’s a portrait here which says he’s adopted a more serious persona in this election.
The FDP’s agenda is pro-business and low tax, so Germans depending on government transfers will have to hope that “Mutti” Merkel, who wants to govern for all, will look after their interests. I have the impression that she will, by and large.
I gather the FDP got some traction because of the fear of high unemployment and its pro-business stance.
Robert, here’s a link that might help answer your question, and another link with a map. From state election results, it looks very much like the Left Party’s support base is strongest in and around Berlin, which are also the areas which formed the former GDR.
Thanks for the links Paul, but I think you’ve misconstrued by question a bit. I know that the Linke is strongest in the east and that this is usually explained as a residual hangover of old Stalinists nostalgic for job security and Trabbies. But I’m not convinced. First of all, continuity in voter support for the old Stalinist Party then the PDS then the Linke was significantly broken at the time of reunion when the electorate in the East initially showed itself to be more right-wing than the western half of the country – delivering lanslides to Helmut Kohl.
What has happened since is that the east has reverted to being the poorest/most shat upon region in the country (something it always ha been) and the working class suburbs of eastern Berlin, the biggest electoral stronghold of the old KPD, which turned against Communism as early as 1946 (when free municipal elections delivered only 14% to the KPD across the whole of Berlin) have reverted to type. It’s hardly surprising that the poorest section of the country has the highest left-wing vote.
If you look a Adam’s Weimar maps, a majority of the KPD’s strongest areas under Weimar were in what would become East Germany. Their only strongholds in the west were in the Ruhr and (in the November 1932 election at least) Hamburg.
What I was hoping for was a graphic representation of where, now the Linke appear to be breaking out to the west, they’re getting their biggest votes. Is it just in Saarland (the Lafontaine factor) or are they doing well in places like Dusseldorf where the KPD used to get votes?
The limitations of the left and right labels are apparent once again.
Guido Westerwelle might be pegged as ‘right’ for their pro-small business, weaker worker protection stance (although I doubt very much he’d have the same scorched earth attitude as Thatcher), but the FDP is also against the Afghan war (or at least the involvement of German troops in it) and has opposed the erosion of civil liberties under the ‘war against terror’ guise – both positions diamterically opposed to a Thatcherite one. How much they’ll press these views while in Coalition is another matter – will be interesting to watch.
Despite predictions of impending death, I imagine the SPD will bounce back pretty quickly. It has been in power in one form or another for a long time now. Governing in coalition with the Right seems so surreal – and appartently very dispiriting for SPD supporters.
And the taboo against forming a coalition with the Left Party is starting to break down at the state level and it’s a safe bet it will break down federally too.
Given how important the SPD has been to the intellectual evolution of social democratic thinking – the Bad Godesberg Program influenced social democratic parties all over the world in the post-war period – the reconciliation with the Left Party will be an interesting development.
Though I don’t envy SPD members having to form a coalition with former Stasi types.
…appartently?
“The limitations of the left and right labels are apparent once again.”
Andrew, you miss the point, and got it wrong as well. Firstly, Westerwelle is one of the most outspoken *proponents* of the war in Afghanistan (although the German establishment doesn’t like calling it a “war” for obvious historical reasons). Secondly, there is absolutely nothing contradictory between being right-wing and opposing restrictions on civil liberties- the very opposite in fact, as a classical component of fundamentalist “free-market” capitalisteers is an opposition to state involvement in the market, and in controlling the behaviour of the individual more generally.
The only party opposed to the war in Afghanistan is Die Linke, who are in accordance – it should be added – with over 80% of the German population.
Also, economically, there really *is* a left-right divide, which is why we have seen the SPD collapse, as they try to sit astride an economy in crisis, and be neither left nor right. The population has responded to the crisis within capitalism, and within German society, by polarising further into left and right camps, broadly speaking, and the SPD has fallen square on its face as a result of trying to be everything to everyone.
Hey Ginja, slander much? If the entire German establishment, media, business circles, secret police and other major political parties can’t actually find any *evidence* of Stasi connections, but prefer instead to repeat red-baiting slander techniques, what makes you think you can do any better? Or do you know something that the German courts don’t?
The *real* reason that the SPD doesn’t want to work with Die Linke (well, there are two – the other is that Die Linke is actually acting like social democrats – unlike the SPD, which has moved so far to the “centre” that it’s actually more or less right wing – and is exposing the SPD’s hypocrisy) is Oskar Lafontaine.
There is a visceral hatred for Lafontaine in the SPD because he used to be national leader of the party, he was the chief architect of Schroeder’s defeat of Helmut Kohl, he then was finance minister under Schroeder… but quit when the SPD ripped the hearts and lungs out of the German welfare state with the Hartz IV reforms.
This was the ultimate treachery to “Die Partei” – to not only leave, but to do so very publicly, and to take thousands of rank and file members with you, and then help set up a new party along with radicals, revolutionaries, and – yes – the heirs to the SED of East Germany (only don’t tell anyone, but Gregor Gysi was actually a leading legal advocate for victims of the East German regime, and Stasi members were systematically prevented from joining the new PDS that he set up).
For a graphic and interactive representation of not only Die Linke’s but other parties’ votes by Land and Wahlkreise, Der Spiegel has a good site here: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,651389,00.html
A more detailed national breakdown (including the small parties) can be found here: http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/bundestagswahlen/BTW_BUND_09/ergebnisse/bundesergebnisse/index.html
I think it’s important to note the (relatively) low voter turnout, and the slump in SPD votes. I suspect (and I’ve seen some evidence for this too, but can’t find it atm. My uncle, who is an SPD councilor in Bavaria agrees with the theory, however) that the majority (about 2/3 – one third went to Die Linke) of the votes the SPD lost didn’t actually transfer anywhere, but simply stayed at home, largely because the SPD showed no sign of being willing to govern in their own right (noone wanted them to govern with the CDU again, and they refused to govern with Die Linke).
Now that the SPD is in opposition, I expect to see a small turn to the left, and a revitalisation of the unions, who previously refused to be very active because “their” SPD was in government. How Die Linke holds up in those conditions is anyone’s guess, but I think the SPD has a long, painful, road back to its old core values ahead of it if it wants ever to be relevant again.
On a high note, the far-right were gazumped out of the Brandenburg parliament on a state election held on the same day.
Also, the FDP is not “pro-small business”. They are pro-big business (they used to call themselves “the party of the rich”, and still regard themselves as such. The “concern” they show for small business is so much politicking, as I’m sure you should be able to realise…
Thanks Wombo. That’s helpful. Of course I have heard right wing commentators who reckon that all parties have moved to the left. In fact they reckon that even though all of Europe has gone right except momentmal Britain the whole shebang is actually left – left, that is, of where they’d like to see it.
I might try to put the Spiegel graphics up at the end of the post as an update, but not tonight.
The update on results with links and graphics is now at the end of the post.
Over the past couple of years, Die Linke has managed to drag German politics a little bit to the left, including not only the SPD, but also some of the policies of the CDU (largely in combination with the effects of the GFC). Not so with the FDP, who still stick out like a neoliberal at a Search Foundation conference…
The SPD and Greens are now more likely to move a little further left, now that they are in opposition, and have to compete with a much stronger Die Linke.
Further afield, I should also point out that the Left Bloc in Portugal quadrupled their seats from four to sixteen on the same day, while the ruling Socialists lost their absolute majority but will still govern…
http://tv1.rtp.pt/noticias/eleicoes/legislativas2009/index.php
http://www.euronews.net/2009/09/28/portuguese-elections-results/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_legislative_election,_2009
Thanks for the links Wombo. The regional breakdowns reveal obviously that he Linke is still massively stronger in the east. But if you compare the results with this historical map (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/g/germany/weimarmapsindex.shtml) you’ll see some interesting parallels. Note in November 1932 the KPD was strongest in Berlin and in Merseburg – the latter being reasonably equivalent to the Linke’s strongest area in the eastern half this time around. Also in the west, the Linke’s stongest areas include the Ruhr and parts of Hamburg – again strongholds of the KPD. What’s different has been the Linke’s strong showing in Bremen and Friesland and of course, Oskar’s Saarland (which wasn’t able to vote in Weimar elections).
Just out of interest, are you drawing any particular conclusion from this continuity in geographical distribution of support, Robert?
Just, as a historian who spent the first semester teaching undergraduates about Weimar Germany and the present semester about the impact of the Cold War on Europe, I find it curious to see old patterns of political allegiance that have been submerged by the Third Reich and the Cold War resurfacing.
Talking of Weimar, it seems the is having deja vu as well:
“We have been bombed right back into the Weimar Republic,” said one leading party member said.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651694,00.html
Yep, I agree it’s interesting, Robert. These things can be very persistent over time. It would be good to know if there’s any research in particular localised political cultures – sociological and/or historical.
Wombo, I actually think the SPD should go into coalition with the Left Party – after all, the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago and there’s no danger of communism returning anywhere. It’s no less shocking than all those supposedly respectable “centre-right” parties joining in coalition with neo-fascists.
I appear to know a little more about the nature of the East German state than you do. The Stasi were all-pervasive in East German society – much more so than their Soviet counterparts. They infiltrated every part of East German society. They had informers everwhere. There was no effective difference between the Communist Party (the SED) and the Stasi – they were one and the same thing. So the idea that former communists would be innocent of any connection with the Stasi is absurd.
How dare this social fascist tell the trut…slander the golorious GDR and SED! I’ll subject myself to 12 hours of self-criticism.
Ginja, this:
“There was no effective difference between the Communist Party (the SED) and the Stasi – they were one and the same thing.”
shows that you clearly do *not* know more about East Germany than I do – although you clearly think you do. You also seem to think that I’m somehow supporting the GDR or SED, once again showing that you’re more full of pointless insults and insinuations than useful analysis (ignorant and pathetic attempts to equate communism and fascism being yet another a case in point).
Just to underline the point made about SPD voters staying home rather than defecting to the right. Here’s what happened compared to the previous election – in raw numbers rather than percentages.
CSU/CDU: Vote went down by 1,976,297
FDP: Vote increased by 1,664,890
Combined Right Vote: DECLINED by 311,407
Looking at the left of the ledger:
Linke: Increased by 1,035,636
Green: Increased by 802,848
SPD: Declined by a whopping 6,205,914 (a 38.3% decrease!)
So, in summary, there was a shift from the CSU/CDU to the FDP, but overall the right wing vote declined slightly – there’s no signs of a shift to the right in Germnay. What has happened is that over 6 million SPD voters from last time didn’t vote for them. Nearly 2 million shifted to the left and over 4 million stayed at home.
Hardly a ringing endorsement for Merkel.
That seems right Robert Bollard – and supports my theory that the SPD will bounce back pretty quickly (if they move to the left and start standing for something again).
Who knows what will happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a big move to the left at the next elections. In four years memories of communism will be even more diminished – so a reluctant coalition with the Left Party would make even more sense for the SPD.
Ginja, I agree that the SPD is now well due for a bounce (although my chips are firmly on Die Linke, politically speaking).
The SPD is already making moves towards the left – a major reshuffle at the top has already happened (see the link below – in German only so far. Sorry.).
While I agree that the SPD should work with Die Linke (and now looks likely to do so, although I reiterate that there is more SPD opposition to working with Lafontaine than with ex-PDS), I suspect that unless Die Linke takes the initiative very directly, such collaboration will probably benefit the SPD more than Die Linke (or at least their left wing, which is the only real political difference between the parties – and is *not* based in the ex-PDS).
Now, some might think this a boon for social democracy, but there really is little left about the SPD which is social democratic (unlike Die Linke), so this is not necessarily the optimum outcome.
Of course, I’m hoping for something even more than that – a pro-active left within Die Linke, dragging the whole spectrum back leftwards.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,652168,00.html
Dear Brian, will write to you here, because otherwise I won’t at all. Wonderful to see so much interest down under in German politics! You Aussies impress me with your cosmopolitanism. It’d be hard to find German equivalents, I think, at least regarding Australian politics. Sydney dust just made it for a few secs into our media the other day, a few traces a bit later from NZ and that was it. More earthquakes, floods and perhaps a military takeover please, so that we can learn more about you!
Haven’t really had time to read any evaluations of the election yet. Am an ödp-voter who knew that his vote wouldn’t make any difference except giving the only party not accepting money from any corporations a few cents in government money ( for each vote receivedfor campaign expenses ). Incidentally typical of our media favouring only that which is big and makes a big noise – the parties that didn’t make it over 5% are medially nonpresent!
I was a SPD voter until a few years ago, when I finally gave up on them in disgust because of Schröders opportunist politics betraying the traditional bias towards the downtrodden. They bravely went on in that direction and were paid in full this time. My personal evaluation of this election: typical German preoccupation with security: People wanted change, but nothing should change. I.e. they returned the conservatives and voted for the unspeakable FDP as partner, which apart from a few bits from an impressive liberal record (long long ago) (now for gays and the rich, against too much govt.) is nothing but hollow and sadly successful selfpropaganda. One of the reasons for despairing of democracy…
Keep it up, friends!
Christoph
Thanks, Christoph, and greetings.
Christoph and I went to school together here in Oz in the late 1950s. After one year at QU he disappeared back to Germany, whence he came in 1955, I think. He’s a real live German voter.
The ÖDP is the Ecological Democratic Party (German: Ökologisch-Demokratische Partei, ÖDP). It’s in no immediate danger of cracking the 5% barrier and is often subsumed in “other” in election reports.
Christoph F.K. Jaeshke: thanks for joining us.
It’s probably a depressing time for left-wingers in Germany at the moment, but I wouldn’t give up entirely on the SPD.
The ALP – our fraternal cousin of the SPD – went down the same road the SPD did with “Agenda 2010″ nonsense. The results were similar, too – the ALP’s vote crashed in 1996.
We now have another ALP government and so far it is significantly more progressive than the previous one – especially in its response to the financial crisis. Our stimulus package includes things like a large building program for social housing. Indeed, we have a PM who loves to taunt neo-liberals with their failures – in lengthy essays.
So there’s always hope. Sometimes a party has to suffer a big defeat to get its act together and realize what it stands for again.