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WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Germany

Local elections in Germany: dramatic loss of support for the Social Democrats

By Ulrich Rippert
15 September 1999

Use this version to print

On September 12, one week after losing its governing majorities in the German states of Brandenburg and the Saarland, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was once again badly defeated in state elections in Thuringia (former East Germany) and North Rhine Westphalia.

Compared with state elections five years ago, the SPD lost half of its voters in Thuringia, falling from 29.6 percent to 18.5 percent, a drop of 11 percent. Previously, the SPD governed the state in a coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In comparison with the national elections just a year ago, the result is even clearer. In this short space of time two-thirds of the voters have deserted the SPD.

The party that has profited from the SPD losses is the conservative CDU. It was able to increase its percentage of the vote by 8 percent, and will now govern alone in Erfurt with 51 percent of the vote.

In absolute terms, however, the CDU lost 13,000 votes. Its percentage increase was a result of the extraordinarily low number who turned out to vote. Just 60 percent of those entitled to vote did so last Sunday. That is nearly 15 percent less than at the last state elections and 30 percent less than the turnout in the national elections last year.

The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS—successor party to the East German Stalinist SED) increased its vote by 12,000 and won a total of 21.4 percent. It overtook the SPD and for the first time became the second strongest party in a German state. The PDS made clear that its aim in the election was to replace the previous coalition of the SPD and CDU and form a new ruling coalition with the SPD, but their hopes were dashed by the weakness of the SPD.

In a departure from previous elections, none of the small parties were able to profit from the dramatic losses of the SPD. The Greens lost two-thirds of their voters and won just 1.9 percent of the total vote. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) “liberals” were virtually wiped out, winning only 1.1 percent. The neo-fascist German People's Union (DVU), which attempted to exploit growing dissatisfaction with a massive poster campaign, won 3.1 percent of the votes in its first electoral effort in the state.

In local elections which took place in North Rhine Westphalia, the most populous of the German states, the rebuff delivered by the electorate to the SPD was even more pronounced. In the great industrial centre of Germany, the Ruhr area, where the SPD governed for generations and exercised virtually unchallenged power, the “red” local councils fell one by one to the CDU.

With 50.3 percent of the votes—a gain of 10 percent—the CDU won a state-wide absolute majority for the first time. In its former strongholds the SPD lost 8.4 percent and reached a total of just 33.9 percent. The Greens lost 2.9 percent, gaining a total of 7.3 percent, and the FDP slightly increased its vote to a total of 4.3 percent. The PDS won just 0.8 percent, underscoring that its base remains restricted to the eastern part of the country.

Election turnout in North Rhine Westphalia stood at 50.4 percent, even lower than in Thuringia, and the lowest figure since the founding of the German Federal Republic. The abstention rate in a number of towns reveals in even more striking manner the desertion of the SPD by its traditional voters. In big industrial centres such as Cologne, Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen the turnout was 10 percent lower than the state-wide average.

In the workers' quarters in the north of Essen, dominated by high unemployment, only 39 percent of those entitled to vote actually participated. In comparison with the local election five years ago, the CDU lost 10,000 votes, but its percentage of the vote increased by 15 percent, ensuring victory for the CDU mayoral candidate.

For the first time young people aged 16 and 17 were entitled to vote. According to initial press reports the abstention rate amongst these voters was especially high, and only the CDU was able to mobilise a section of any significance. For the overwhelming majority of young people, there was nothing to vote for.

Despite local influences, two issues dominated the local elections. A rejection of widespread corruption, rife at all levels of town and local administration and embodied in a series of scandals, came together with growing opposition to the anti-social-budget policies of the national SPD-Green government.

The transformed social structure in many towns of the Ruhr area also played a role. Over a long period of time massive job losses have been the rule in these former centres of the coal and steel industry. At the same time the social democratic local administrations have been trying to encourage service industries and small employers in the hope of establishing a “stable middle class”.

However the tax concessions designed to attract new employers were financed by drastic cuts in social services. The result was further economic decline, rather than prosperity, intensified by cheap-wage jobs in the service industries that fostered increased social polarisation.

The minister president of North Rhine Westphalia, Wolfgang Clement, is a partisan within the SPD of the policy of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Amongst his closest collaborators is Bodo Hombach, a former finance minister in the state and one of the authors of the “reform” policy statement issued jointly by Schröder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Hombach headed the pro-business lobby inside the SPD from Schröder's chancellor's office until his involvement in various intrigues and a corruption scandal led to his being shifted to the post of co-ordinator for the European Union in the Balkans.

On the evening of the elections Clement declared that he was surprised at the extent of the losses for the social democrats. Although as minister president he was not required to stand in the elections, it was the first public referendum on his policies.

For the SPD the local election results bode ill for state elections which must take place in May of next year in the Ruhr. Many SPD functionaries are already contemplating the next catastrophe. Nevertheless, Clement emphasised he would make no change in his policies.

This was the common theme of all the statements made by leading social democratic politicians following the announcement of the election result. After the first reliable election figures were announced, Chancellor Schröder went before the cameras and repeated nearly word for word what he had said after the election defeats a week earlier.

He had gotten the message and he knew to whom it was addressed. However, there was no alternative to the government's budget policies. He would stick without wavering to this policy. The newly appointed SPD general secretary, Franz Müntefering, declared that the party would intensify its campaign to convince people of the necessity for cuts.

Ten years after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), when politicians of every stripe sang the praises of democracy and celebrated the people as the “sovereign power in the parliamentary system”, the SPD leadership has delivered a real lesson in bourgeois democracy: no matter how clearly the electors express their opposition to government policy, they have no real influence.

The government will cling to its anti-social policies. The job of Franz Müntefering is to wield carrot and stick and keep control over critical elements in the party's ranks, while a large-scale propaganda and media campaign in favour of the government policy is set into motion.

In Germany's second house of parliament (Bundesrat), the latest elections have irrevocably shifted the balance in favour of the CDU. The SPD had already lost its stronghold, Hesse, in April, and on September 5 the party lost the Saarland and Brandenburg, which will now be governed by a coalition.

All legal measures and government decisions requiring agreement in the Bundesrat must now be reworked in collaboration with the CDU. The leader of the CDU, Wolfgang Schäuble, has already declared that his party will not resort to “gridlock politics”. The CDU also declared it largely agreed with the plans for pension cuts worked out by SPD Labour Minister Walter Riester.

Some figures in the SPD leadership regard the prospect of closer collaboration with the CDU as a means of stabilising the government. Behind the scenes, Chancellor Schröder has been exerting pressure for the SPD to form a coalition with the CDU in Brandenburg.

However, on a national level the CDU has reacted cautiously. Despite its election victories the jubilation at CDU headquarters, the Konrad Adenauer Haus, was distinctly muted. CDU General Secretary Angela Merkel emphasised that the people had voted for her party to play the role of opposition for four years. She knows very well that if the CDU were to enter into the government at this stage, the deep conflicts inside her own party over future policies would inevitably surface.

The round of elections in Germany continues with voting in the East German state of Saxony this coming Sunday, followed by elections for the Senate in Berlin on October 10. These will provide new opportunities for broad sections of the public to express—in however confused a fashion—opposition to the government's budget proposals. Schröder, however, is determined to impose his policies against the will of the people.

See Also:
Germany: The crisis of the Social Democratic Party
[14 September 1999]
A resounding setback for Schröder
German Social Democratic Party loses state elections in the Saarland and Brandenburg
[8 September 1999]