elections – Europe2.eu

The divided Germany

It has been more than thirty years since the German reunification but the recent European parliament election once again makes it very clear that there still exist two Germany when it comes to politics.

In nearly all of the geographical parts that once made up the east German state, the Alternative für Deutschland party now is the largest party in terms of votes. In fact, the only outliers from this pattern are Berlin, Potsdam city center and its surrounding land district, the district of Eichfeld which borders the “west Germany”, and the three Thuringian city centers of Erfurt, Weimar and Jena.

At the same time, there is not a single election district in the old west Germany where AfD is the party with the largest share of the vote. Here, that party is instead almost everywhere the Christian-democratic CDU – or in Bavaria its sister party CSU – with a few city center exceptions where the Greens or in some even fewer cases the Social Democratic Party comes out on top.

In addition, it is also worth noting that in the eastern parts a not insignificant number of voters chose to give their vote to the new Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht, a break-away from the Left party, while the same BSW in the western part garnered much lower numbers.

It is clear that Germany has a deep political divide and that it even after three decades have something to do with its divided history. That so many voters – in many cases around half of the voting population – in the eastern part chooses to give their vote to parties either to the extreme right or the extreme left cannot be viewed as anything else than a deep dissatisfaction with the traditional parties and their policies. A dissatisfaction that in some way or another must be listened to and taken seriously in order to stop anti-democratic forces from harnessing the discontent for their own purposes.

Macron’s high gamble

President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the French parliament and proscribe a national election as soon as the result of the election to the EU parliament was clear is a high stakes gamble.

One thing to remember is that the French national elections and the elections for the EU parliament in France follows two different electorial systems. The EU parliament election is a proportional vote while the French elections is a variant of majority vote. This do mean that the Rassemblement National’s result in the first is not necessarily directly corresponding to a potential result in a national election. And this is probably one of the calculations made by Macron. The two-round voting system means that in the second round there will be only a couple names to choose by in each single seat electorial district.

Traditionally, the Rassemblement national/Front National’s results in French elections to the National Assembly as well as presidential elections have been tempered by the electorate’s willingness to come together and vote for “anyone but FN”. This is pretty much how every French president from Jacques Chirac forward have got their job.

The big question looming over the coming election is if this “anyone but…” voting pattern will still hold. The RN’s success in the European election is a sign that many French voters are prepared to vote for them, maybe also in a national election, and already in the last election where RN got 88 seats in the National Assembly this cordon sanitaire showed signs of breaking.

The second part of Macron’s calculation may be that elections to the European parliament and elections to the French National Assembly are in people’s mind two different things. Traditionally in most countries there is a clear increased willingness among many voters to be somewhat more “daring” in their choice of candidates for the in their minds more abstract and less important European Parliament than for their respective national parliaments. So when forced to show their cards in “a real election” some may be slightly less inclined to pick the more unsafe card.

At least that must be what president Macron hopes for in his high stakes gamble.

The Pirates are entering Berlin politics

For the first time has a Pirate Party entered the political arena for real. With nine percent of the votes in the election in Berlin, the German Piratenpartei managed to get a good bit above the threshold limit and enters the Berlin Abgeordnetehaus where it will have 15 of the 152 seats in the parliament.

Is this the beginning of a new political movement getting a foothold in German and European politics, much like the green parties once started their road to become a serious part of the European political landscape, or is it only a temporary fad and more of a protest against the established parties? It is yet a little too early to tell. There certainly are signs that the issues that the pirate parties count as their core areas – personal integrity, data protection, net freedom and the likes – are growing in importance, much like during the 1970s and 1980s the environment got in focus. The question is if this new set has the momentum needed to foster a new political alignment. That the Pirate Party get their first real success in Berlin is in itself not all that surprising. The city has a relatively large number of people with alternative lifestyle views and on top of that a booming creative and internet-focused culture. Even so it still must be seen as somewhat surprising that almost one tenth of the voters chose to give their vote to this yet untested party. The future will tell if the Pirates manage to repeat their electorial success in other, more traditional parts of Germany or not.

German Greens’ success in BW

From what it looks, the German Greens have won their first government premier position in the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. With 24.2 percent of the votes the Green Party managed to become bigger than their traditional ally SPD with 23.1 percent. This by all likelyhood means that the next premier in Baden-Württemberg will be the Greens’ Winfried Kretchmann in a Green-SPD minority coalition government. The Christian Democratic CDU which are traditionally strong in the region got 39.0 percent of the vote and are now losing their grip over the state government for the first time since 1953.

Even if the circumstances can be said to be unusually in favour of the Greens’ politics, with the local debate over Stuttgart 21 – the big rebuilding of the railway station in Stuttgart – as the main focus and the nuclear disaster in Japan as a backdrop, it could also very well be seen as a possible bigger shift in political preferences, especially in Germany where the Greens have gone on to becoming a big, established party besides the traditional left and right parties SPD and CDU/CSU and catering to voters that want something else than the traditional parties.

Swedish parliament election

The Swedish parliamentary election resulted in a new mandate for the sitting center-right coalition government. The coalition did however lose their majority in the parliament and will continue govern as a minority government.

British parliament election

The election to the British Parliament’s House of Commons ended with something for the UK so unusual as a parliament where no party got a majority of the seats – in British terminology a “hung parliament”. The Conservative party became the largest party but lacks an overall majority. This means that the party and their leader David Cameron in some form will be reliant on a second party – most likely the Liberal Democrats – to form a stable government.

It is however very likely that there will be a change of government from today’s Labour party government, seeing that the partyo no longer is the largest in the House of Commons.

French regional elections

As prognosed, the regional elections in France turned out to be a setback for the UMP who are governing on the national level. The socialists succeeded not only in keeping contol of all the regional governments they already had, but also taking new mandates. This success for the left is by many experts seen as a mistrust against president Nicholas Sarkozy and the UMP government.

Sources: Le Monde, Le Figaro, Euronews

German Bundestag election

The German election for the Bundestag (federal parliament) resulted in that the current chancellor Angela Merkel can continue in office, but with a change of coalition partner. Instead of the grand coalition between CDU/CSU and SDP, there will now be a more traditional coalition between the Christian democrats in CDU/CSU and the liberal FDP.

Source: ARD Tagesschau

European Parliament elections

The elections to the European Parliament turned out to be a success for the smaller parties in many of the member states, not the least the green parties. Among the more unexpected outcomes was also the fact that the newly founded Pirate Party of Sweden got enough votes to get a seat in the parliament.