Today there were state elections in Lower Saxony and Hessen. When it got obvious in the last weeks that the elections would be lost for Chancellor Schröder's social democrats (SPD), they tried to put emphasis on the Iraq war and turn the result around as they did in the nationwide elections last year. The Hessen election was clear before as the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is doing quite a successful work. At the moment they lead with 49.1% (+5), while SPD had to face a massive loss of more than 10% down to 29. SPD coalition partner, ecological party the Greens, made 10 (+3), while the CDU partner FDP (liberals) surprisingly also won 3 to securely make it to the parliament with 8% Much more interesting was the election in Lower Saxony, a traditional SPD country, and home as well as former governing country of Chancellor Schröder. Also here they had to face massive losses of 14% down to a bit less than 34, while CDU collected 13 to make it almost 48%. Very interesting that here also FDP overtook the Greens (8 to 7.5). The state governments have influence in the law making in the "Bundesrat" (comparable to the US Senat). There the CDU block strengthend their position with now a huge majority of 41 firm votes towards only 16 firm votes of the SPD block. Further 18 votes belong to uncommon party mixtures that are not guaranteed to anyone and usually don't vote in major conflicts. And finally this vote made it nearly impossible that the President of Germany, Johannes Rau (SPD), gets a second term in office next year. In the German system the President has only limited function and mainly is for representing the country though (unless in times of major governing crisis).
I´m quite happy about these results. The SPD tried in both states to bring in the Iraq-theme and the voters didn´t eat it! Actually it´s a slap in the face of schröder for his lousy governing. Congratulations to the FDP and espacially to Wulff. Koch has quite a good reputation, but personally I can´t like him (attitude, lying... but hey... he is a politician) domingo
Bad election for Schröder? what a surprise. He will go down in history as the worst german chancellor since the guy with the funny mustache
Actually I'm a bit surprised about that clear outcome as the voters in the chancellor elections really were extremely stupid to believe all the things Schröder said before (I had some doubts that they'd learn). Koch is a very dubious person I also don't like at all, but I got lots of respect for the way he was simply treating (or ignoring) the times he was under really heavy criticism - that's the way you got to be if you want to be successful in the political business.
Good for Germany...this is a step in the right direction. The sooner the Red-Green coalition is out, the sooner Germany get on the road to some real social and economic reforms. Also, I'll admit to some shadenfreude that the anti-US SPD was beaten so badly. It gives renewed hope for the US-German relationship.
Well hooray for Germany, but I still can't get over the fact that Germans are all of a sudden disgusted by Schroeder. They had their chance to vote him out only a matter of months ago but somehow figured that Iraq -- an issue fairly irrelevant to Germany, which was never going to be asked to contribute troops -- was more important than their horrid economy.