The Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union are on track to form a new government in Germany following yesterday’s election, although the conservative major party has only made modest gains.
The big change, however, is the collapse in support for the Social Democrats. The SPD, who polled 34.2% in 2005, have collapsed to 22.9%, which will cost them one third of their seats.
The biggest gains, however, are for the three opposition minor parties, who have all achieved record results. The 2005 election saw the biggest ever result for minor parties, with the three parties gaining 166 seats. The previous record was 126 seats, which was set in both 1994 and 1998.
In comparison, the three minor parties appear to have won 237 seats, 90 more than the Social Democrats and only two seats less than the CDU/CSU coalition.
The Free Democrats have won 93 seats, up 32 on 2005. The Left Party has gained 22 seats for a total of 76, and the Greens have gained 17 seats for a total of 68. These results are records for each party. I’ve based my figures on the Deutsche Welle website, from where I shamelessly ripped off these graphs:
The ‘others’ vote has been inflated from 2005. While the far-right NPD has largely remained steady on 1.5%, the new Pirate Party polled 2%, which is impressive for their first election.
No surprises here – the outcome which occurred was consistent with that of the polling data, which remarkably, varied very little over the last 12 months.
Naturally, a disastrous result for the SPD, their lowest in the post war era. What tends to be overlooked in the mainstream press, fixated on Merkel’s “great” victory, is that this is also the lowest vote for the CDU/CSU since 1949. This election marks the lowest combined vote total for the major parties – 56.7%, and the first time the major party vote has fallen below 60% (generally the major party total easily exceeds 70% in Federal elections).
This is also the first time either The Greens or Die Linke (formerly PDS) polled double figures in a federal election.
It is quite obvious why this has happened. It was inevitable that a coalition of the two largest electoral competitors, would create a void which would need to be filled by an alternative, and the minor parties (or more appropriately, medium sized parties) were the ones who came to fill it. The disenchanted swinging major party voter, did not have an alternative major party to vote for, as the major parties took this “privilege” away from them. This should have been quite obvious to the major parties in 2005, and I can’t get over how naïve the SPD was, to agree to enter a Grand Coalition as a minor partner. They put themselves in the worst possible position from which to contest the next election. In short, they dug their own grave, through their own stupidity, and they have no-one but themselves to blame for it.
Interesting results from Brandenburg & Schleswig-Holstein. In Brandenburg the big change appears to be the collapse of the NPD vote and the Greens & FDP getting over 4%. Whether state premier Platzeck sticks with the SPD-CDU coalition is another matter (I haven’t heard whats happening there – maybe post-Bundestag elections he’ll go for a SPD-Die Linke coalition? Schleswig-Holstein was quite interesting with both the CDU & SPD suffering big drops in support (9% for the CDU & 13% for SPD) and the rises for FDP, Greens & Die Link (8%, 6% & 6% respectively). State premier Peter-Harry Carstensen can however now go with a CDU-FDP government with a 3 seat majority. State seat numbers (and archived results) at: http://www.parties-and-elections.de/germany3.html