European elections and Germany
If last Sunday’s European vote was a sign of things to come for Germany’s federal election in the fall, then the country will be run by a Conservative-Liberal coalition after September 27.
Angela Merkel’s Conservative CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU polled together at 37,8 percent, down from 44,5% in 2004 (42 seats, down from 49) – yet another manifestation of the Chancellor’s difficulties in translating her personal popularity into votes for her party. The fact that Merkel appears to have decided that the best way to campaign is not to campaign at all has not helped (and is driving her strategists to distraction).
Meanwhile, the Conservatives’ partner in the current grand coalition, the Social Democrats, came in at 20,8%: a record low, and the party’s worst poll outcome in any German election since 1945 (23 seats, as in 2004). The defeat was all the more devastating because the Social Democrats had fought Merkel’s economics minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg tooth and claw over the rescue of German car manufacturer Opel, and won – but their efforts were not honored by the voters. The SPD’s catastrophe may also put paid to the Social Democrat Martin Schulz’s ambition to follow Günter Verheugen as EU Commissioner. Hopes that the Social Democrats will put up a real fight in the federal election campaign and catch up in a last-minute race (as they did in 2005) were dampened by a Sunday night talk show in which Frank Walter Steinmeier, the SPD’s candidate for Chancellor and presently foreign minister of Germany, gave a performance that was lackluster even by his standards.
The other loser of this election is the renegade leftwing party Die Linke, which has not been able to capitalize on the economic crisis; at 7,5%, it gained a mere 0,6 % over its result in the last European election in 2004 (8 as opposed to 7 seats in 2004).
In times of crisis, Germans like to vote conservative. But the capital-C Conservatives, it seems, moved to the left by Merkel in an attempt to squeeze out the Social Democrats, are not conservative enough.
Indeed, the real winners of this vote were what might be called the mainstream opposition. The Greens got 12.1 % of the vote (up from 11,9 in 2004; 14 seats, from 13). The Liberals, who want to govern the country together with the CDU, nearly doubled their vote from 6 to 11 % (from 7 to 12 seats). Finally, there is the CSU, the CDU’s regional sister and the party that proves that it is by no means better to have your camel in the tent. After losing their decade-long absolute majority in Bavaria in the fall, the CSU leadership had been terrified of falling short of the 5% electoral threshold – which would have meant the end for its aggressively maverick chairman Horst Seehofer, Bavaria’s answer to Nicolas Sarkozy, and more effective at undermining the Chancellor than the entirety of the SPD. But the CSU sailed into the European Parliament at 7,2%.
In the coming months, Chancellor Angela Merkel may well find herself squeezed for a change – between the Liberals and her Bavarian sister party. The chance that she will be running the country after the elections are quite high. But it now seems possible that she would do so – in terms of votes, at least – as the weakest Chancellor Germany has ever had.