The website of the Federal Returning Officer in Germany has great maps showing the results of the German election (as well as the previous election). In particular, they’ve produced maps showing the results in each constituency. Germany’s Bundestag includes 299 MPs representing single-member constituenncy, as well as at least 299 list MPs. I’ve posted the maps after the fold, very interesting.
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.
I plan on covering the German federal election, but I haven’t had a chance to consider the state elections happening in Germany before that. Luckily Charles in Germany has posted this comment on the blog yesterday, and I’ll post it here as a new thread:
Hi Ben, I don’t know if you know, or whether your such a psephoholic that you’d be interested, but before the German Federal elections on September 27th there are 2 German states going to the polls on the 30th August, namely Thüringia and Saxony.
I can’t comment much about the state of Saxony, but livingin Thüringia I’ve tried to garner a much information as I can concerning the up-coming poll. The CDU are the incombents in Thuringia with 45 seats in an 88 seat parliament. The newly named “Die Linke”, ie The Left which I’m told are the leftover of the Communist party here in East Germany currently have 28 seats, and the SPD have 15 seats. Politicians are elected by a complex amalgamation of 1st past-the-post and proportional representation (I’m told), whereby if a party gets 5% of the vote they automatically are entitled to at least 6 seats.
The current mister-president is CDU man Dieter Althaus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Althaus). He came under some criticism recently when skiing in Autria where he was responsible for the death of a woman, I think becasue he was travelling cross-piste. As he was badly injued himself in the accident, and proclaims to have no memory of it, he refused to apologise, which the opposition here were very critical of.
Of greater interest to you all though is the local Green party. At the last election they fell just short of getting enough votes for representation at 4.5%, but have improved somewhat now with polls consistently giving them 6% or more. Their webpage is:
What’s also interesting is that in polls the CDU have fallen to 43%, which would mean they will no longer be able to govern Thüringia in their own right. The next biggest party are Die Linke, who until a couple of days ago, the SPD swore they would never form government with. Then I heard (and all this is second hand because my Deutsch is crap) that the SPD are willing to go into coalition with Die Linke, but only if the minister-president position goes to an SPD person – to which Die Linke have said ok!
Info on German elections can be seen in English here:
http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/index.html
For Thüringia results should appear here:
http://www.wahlen.thueringen.de/wahlseite.asp
the Thuringian site also has a very good breakdown of voting in the area for the recent European election.
Only for the real psephoholics though…
A few days ago the website RealClearWorld came out with a list of the five elections it considers the most significant of 2009. They are:
Germany goes to the polls on September 27 for a federal election to elect a new Bundestag. Germany has been governed by a grand coalition of the two major parties in German politics. Angela Merkel has served as Chancellor as leader of the Christian Democratic Union and its sister party the Bavarian Christian Social Union, and has served in coalition with the Social Democratic Party.
The grand coalition came to office after an early election in 2005 which saw the end of seven years of coalition between the SPD and the Greens, led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The 2005 election saw strong support for the new Left Party, campaigning against the SPD-Green government from the left. No major party could form a coalition without the Left Party, thus forcing the major parties to govern together.
There are six political parties in German federal politics. The major right-of-centre party is technically two parties: the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union. The CSU only runs in Bavaria, where the CDU does not run, so the two parties are not in competition. The CDU/CSU is led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is the largest left-of-centre party, and is led by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
There are also three significant minor parties, with similar levels of support and numbers of deputies in the Bundestag. The Free Democratic Party is a centre-right neoliberal party, which has existed since shortly after the Second World War and has served in federal coalition governments for 41 of the first 50 years of the post-war Federal Republic. The FDP has generally leaned towards the CDU/CSU, although they supported an SPD government from 1969 to 1982.
Germany is also home to the original Green Party, whose name was then adopted by many other Green parties around the world. The party has been in many coalition governments on state levels, mainly with the SPD but occasionally with the CDU, and was in federal government from 1998 to 2005.
The other minor party is the Left Party. The party was formed in 2007 by a merger of two parties who had campaigned together for the first time at the 2005 election. The party consists of the former PDS and WASG. PDS, or Party of Democratic Socialism, was the successor-party to the former East German governing party, and polls strongly in the East without any luck in the West. WASG split off from the SPD in 2005 out of disenchantment with the Schröder government. The Left Party is led by Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD finance minister and Chancellor candidate.
Germany has used the mixed-member proportional since it was adopted by West Germany at the end of the Second World War. 299 deputies are elected to the Bundestag representing single-member constituencies. Approximately 300 more deputies are elected on state lists to “top up”. For those familiar with the similar system used in New Zealand, the key difference is that list MPs represent an individual state, rather than the entire country. Parties must win at least 3 constituencies or poll 5% across the country to receive list seats.
Recent opinion polls suggest that the CDU/CSU is well in front of the SPD, polling around 36-37%, up slightly from their 2005 result. In contrast, the SPD has fallen sharply, polling around 23-26%, down from 34% at the last election. Clearly the SPD is suffering from being a junior partner in the current government. The lack of an opposition major party has also aided all three minor parties, all of whom are polling consistently in the low teens, up from the 8-9% range they each polled in 2005.
With nine months before the next election, it appears that the most likely outcome will be a CDU/CSU/FDP coalition, with an outside chance of an unstable SPD/Green/Left government.
