Bye-bye elections in Germany
Posted by Charles II on February 21, 2011
Helen Pidd, The Guardian:
Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) suffered a humiliating defeat in a key German regional election – something that will make governing all the more difficult for her already shaky coalition.
Exit polls released after polling stations closed suggested the German chancellor’s CDU had lost control of Hamburg to the opposition SPD party.
One poll, conducted by the state television channel ZDF, projected that the centre-left SPD was set to win 50% of the vote.
The CDU took just 20%, according to the pollsters – the worst result for the party in the port city since the second world war.
The dramatic plunge in support for Merkel’s party, which polled 42.6% of the vote at the last election in Hamburg in 2008, can be attributed to voter dissatisfaction with the chancellor’s handling of the euro crisis as well as problems within her own party at home and particularly in Hamburg.
It’s just one regional election, and a lot of times local issues dominate. But I think the SPD–all of the European left, as a matter of fact–needs to think through what it is going to do if it does win power. There is a lot of dissatisfaction focused on unemployment, foreign workers/immigrants, and so on. There need to be alternatives that make people happy.
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Phoenix Woman said
And of course this is being all but ignored by the same national media that trumpeted Merkel’s and the CDU’s accession a few years ago as proof that conservatism was on a permanent upswing in Europe.