Red Commissar
13th May 2012, 19:43
There are several news floating around about the NRW (North Rhein-Westphalia) parliament elections. You can read some here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/germany-election-nrw-idUSL5E8GD1JG20120513
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/13/north_rhine_westphalia_election_setback_for_merkel .html
Being the most populous state of Germany as well as containing four of the 10 largest cities, it is sometimes seen as an indicator of possible trends nationally. Most of the media channels seem to be seeing this in the frame of voters bucking austerity and delivering an embarassment to Merkel's CDU party (though honestly like Hollande's performance in France, it doesn't signal the end of austerity and neoliberalism). The last election in 2010 saw her party lose the government to a SPD/Green coalition. This election has seen their share of the parliament has only increased increase with this election allowing them to have a more convincing majority in the parliament. Merkel's party dropped from 34% to 26%.
Not sure about turnout this time around, I think it was around 60%, if so it wouldn't be too different from 2010's.
We're getting these results from most exit polling
SPD- 38.8%
Greens- 12.2%
CDU- 25.8%
FDP- 8.6%
Pirates- 7.6%
While the CDU took a significant drubbing, it is interesting to point out that Die Linke, who had managed to meet the 5% threshold in 2010, was unable to do so this year, only getting some 3-4%. I believe this was probably at the expense of the Pirates, for the same reasons in the 2011 Berlin state elections. Not withstanding the issues with electoralism to begin with, Die Linke doesn't appear to be appealing in the same way to activists as it once was, something the Pirate Party seems to be doing better.
I don't know, maybe someone with some better knowledge of German politics can comment. As far as I'm concerned this is the revolving door in play with regards to SPD and CDU performance.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/germany-election-nrw-idUSL5E8GD1JG20120513
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/13/north_rhine_westphalia_election_setback_for_merkel .html
Being the most populous state of Germany as well as containing four of the 10 largest cities, it is sometimes seen as an indicator of possible trends nationally. Most of the media channels seem to be seeing this in the frame of voters bucking austerity and delivering an embarassment to Merkel's CDU party (though honestly like Hollande's performance in France, it doesn't signal the end of austerity and neoliberalism). The last election in 2010 saw her party lose the government to a SPD/Green coalition. This election has seen their share of the parliament has only increased increase with this election allowing them to have a more convincing majority in the parliament. Merkel's party dropped from 34% to 26%.
Not sure about turnout this time around, I think it was around 60%, if so it wouldn't be too different from 2010's.
We're getting these results from most exit polling
SPD- 38.8%
Greens- 12.2%
CDU- 25.8%
FDP- 8.6%
Pirates- 7.6%
While the CDU took a significant drubbing, it is interesting to point out that Die Linke, who had managed to meet the 5% threshold in 2010, was unable to do so this year, only getting some 3-4%. I believe this was probably at the expense of the Pirates, for the same reasons in the 2011 Berlin state elections. Not withstanding the issues with electoralism to begin with, Die Linke doesn't appear to be appealing in the same way to activists as it once was, something the Pirate Party seems to be doing better.
I don't know, maybe someone with some better knowledge of German politics can comment. As far as I'm concerned this is the revolving door in play with regards to SPD and CDU performance.