Comments on: Election Day in Germany

By: Sammy Morse

Sammy Morse — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:57:25 +0000

German voters are reasonably smart about ticket splitting between state and federal elections and have been for some time. Kurt Beck, the popular SPD state president of Rhineland Palitanite always delivers state results massively ahead of the Federal poll figures for the SPD there; Günther Oettinger does the same for the CDU in Baden Wuertemberg and for years during the Kohl years Johannes Rau produced comfortable SPD overall majorities in NRW at state level while the state split pretty evenly between the big two parties at federal level. Pietzeck is building on Manfred Stolpe’s years of personal popularity as SPD State PM in Brandenburg. Along with Merkel, Stolpe was one of the first easterners to gain credibility as a serious politician with voters on either side of the old inner-German border.

And why not? That’s the point of federalism isn’t it?

By: Christian Schmidt

Christian Schmidt — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:34:39 +0000

The election was an absolute disaster for the SPD, no mistake. Still, they had a few disasters (electoral and otherwise) in the past (split in 1914, decisively beaten by the Nazis 1933, bad losses 1953&1957) and recovered. On the other hand, so far they are handling this badly: Believe it or not, on election night Muentefering (SPD leader) said he wants to stand again when the biannual election for the leader’s position and the executive come up in November. Steinmeier (SPD candidate for chancellorship) now want to lead the parliamentary party, i.e. become opposition leader. Their arrogance is not short of Brown and we-can-win-this Mandelson.

As other have notd, Merkel’s result is nothing to shout about.Her majority is reasonable good thanks to the overhang seats, but these will be gone by the next election, so she has her work cut out.

Not only the FDP had their best result ever, so had the Greens and the Left. The left are actually the strongest party in two Laender (Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt). In only two Laender do the CDU and SPD together get more than 60% (Lower Saxony and Northrhine-Westphalia). In Berlin they get 43% between them.

There were also two Land elections in parallel with the Federal election. The interesting one is the one in Brandenburg, where there were big differences between the Federal result and the Land result: SPD 33% Land and 25% Federal, Linke 27% and 29%, CDU 20% and 24%. In other words, the SPD state First Minister Platzeck is quite popular. He might well be get the leadership (again).

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:46:18 +0000

For those arguing a rightwing triumph – a tendency on these pages -

‘Yesterday’s election was a disaster for the Social Democrats, who polled a mere 23.1 per cent of the vote, their worst general election performance since the founding of post-war West Germany. Die Linke (“The Left”) – the successor organisation to the former East German Communist Party – mopped up a large chunk of those votes, taking a record 12.4 per cent.’ (Independent)

Try arguing against a 12% vote in the UK for the ex communist party – a new high and equivalent for the Greens. Overall Merkell’s party didn’t do well- it dropped % compared with the last vote- overall it and the business party won with less than 50%; nor did the SPD the mild left.

Both centrist left and right lost votes to the extremists on the right and left (Business party / Greens and Linke)–Germany is actually splitting down the middle and leaking votes to the extremes. A worrying tendency…

By: Joe James B

Joe James B — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:41:49 +0000

Good news.

By: Sammy Morse

Sammy Morse — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:35:34 +0000

Re overhang seats – German TV are now calling 26 CDU overhang seats and 1 for the SPD. 10 alone come from Baden-Wurtemmberg, where the SPD are weak but both the Greens and the FDP are particularly strong; the CDU have won all but 1 of the first past the post seats there with little more than a third of the party list vote.

Another point about Bavaria and the CSU – half of the total losses for the CSU/CDU coalition tonight came from Bavaria; this builds on 2005 where Merkel’s generally good performance across the country, especially in the traditionally Socialist big northern states, was undercut by a CSU collpase in Bavaria. I don’t think Merkel is the person who’ll be feeling the heat for this!