SPD: Always Heading Downwards?
The German social democratic party SPD lost a lot of votes within the past few years meaning they had to take a giant defeat on September 27, 2009. At the last elections, SPD received about the same votes as CDU / CSU (both ~35%), but this year the SPD got only 23% of the votes, and CDU / CSU could reach 33,8%. Therefore the CDU has also received most first vote seats.
Reasons for the reduction
Several aspects merge when we want to take into consideration what could be the reason for this desaster. First of all, the SPD is not the only left party, there is also the new socialistic party Die Linke. It has formed from two different parties that were popular in only Eastern and Western Europe. The union has helped them to reach the 5% barrier (in Germany a party has to get more than 5% of the votes, otherwise it will not be able to enter the Bundestag).
Moreover, the SPD was in a coalition with the conservative CDU over the past few years, therefore they were not really able to act socially. There are even reports of a member of the Bundestag claiming that some of the SPD members did not want to act socially because they were afraid of bad news reports (the widest spread news paper in Germany is pro-CDU). Therefore voters now say that the SPD was not social anymore, so they voted for another left party - Die Linke.
What about the future?
It's possible that the SPD will be able to gain new power in the opposition so that people will consider them again as a social party. On the other hand it is also possible that voters will feel content if the work of Die Linke and vote them one more time. Parties sometimes lose and others take their position, this is normal in politics. In the past (about ~1930) the party Zentrum was very strong, but nowadays they get exactly 0.0% (they got some votes, but not enough to reach 0.1%).
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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