This year was no different: The last opinion polls before Sunday suggested a 48 percent majority for a new center-right/liberal coalition. How come? German exit polls are based on state-of-the-art methodology; take, for example, 600 pre-selected local wards perfectly mirroring German society and which announce incoming votes first and fast; once, roughly speaking, a third of these have been counted, the evening is all but over -- 75 minutes after voting had ended, Angela Merkel declared victory.Please note that her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is referred to as “black” and not “blue,” as would be the case in the United Kingdom and many other neighboring countries, a matter of “political colors,” so to speak.
The facts: The CDU/Liberals (Black-Yellow) command a 42-seat majority in the 622-seat German parliament (332 versus 290 seats for all other parties) with one or two potential but minor updates still not factored in at the time of writing this column on Monday at lunchtime. The CDU/CSU garnered 33.8 percent, a drop of 1.4 percentage points; the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) won 23 percent, a historic drop of 11.2 percent; the Free Democratic Party (FDP) took in 14.6 percent, up 4.7 points; The Left (Die Linke) got 11.9 percent (plus 3.2 points); the Greens had 10.7 percent (plus 2.6 points); and all others received 6.0 percent (plus 2 points). A full 48.4 percent voted black-yellow.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) called the elections a “bitter day” for German social democracy, reflecting upon the impossibility of gong back to business as usual. Kurt Biedenkopf, a former leading CDU politician, declared victory for the “Bürgerliche Mehrheit” (“Bürger” referring to middle-class citizens, a terminology often used in Germany to distinguish between left and right); he then said that “people's parties” taken together (the German “Volksparteien” CDU/CSU and SPD) will never again reach above 80 percent of the vote, as they had in the past.
Regional losses for the CDU's sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) meant more somber tones coming from Munich.The Green Party's Claudia Roth emphasized her party's second best ever election results and a net gain of 25 percent more deputies in the Bundestag and vowed to be an effective green opposition.
On Germany's ARD TV station, Die Linke's Lothar Bisky (the Left Party; former SPD, ex-communist party members) celebrated their own form of victory as they had added 3.2 percent more votes to their tally. Euronews reported explicitly on the Liberals' biggest success since 1949 and Guido Westerwelle as the potential new German foreign minister; both the Green Party and the Liberals will most likely never be able to nominate the chancellor, though, as this task is reserved for the party with the relative majority of votes even when in a coalition government.
A happy Merkel told a cheering audience that her new black-yellow coalition is what she really wanted and that she would aim to be a chancellor of all Germans, calling her new government a middle-of-the-road, open-to-all venture. So which issues were decisive: unemployment, climate change or immigration? Difficult to tell as yet another opinion poll shown on ZDF indicated that when asked whether the CDU or the SPD are better in creating new jobs, a majority of 58 percent had no party political preference. Asked which party would be more suited to lead Germany out of the economic crisis, 45 percent came to the same conclusion; in other words, no clear issue-relevant party dominance.
Do party political colors matter? Will black-yellow be more or rather less Turkey friendly? It is too early to say how the new coalition will position itself vis-à-vis EU candidate country Turkey, but a more business-friendly Germany is not necessarily a bad omen for Turkey. The key players, then, are the German Liberals. It is not an entirely implausible scenario that four years from now the FDP and the SPD will once again join forces should numbers add up and that the Liberals may manage Germany's foreign policies for many years to come as they once did under Hans-Dietrich Genscher. A big bonus on Turkey's long and winding road towards securing full EU membership is that if Germans hate one thing, it is uncertainty; even if backed up by Vienna and Paris openly acting against the vast majority of EU states which at present support full membership is one such experiment most German voters will not enjoy, it is against “realpolitik.” If Turkey's EU accession train is derailed, it will not be because of a hostile German electorate but because of public indifference. Germany is a nation not only proud of its efficiency but is exhibiting a great interest in learning about almost everything, too. The next proactive lobbying efforts should begin by helping to better inform the German electorate about present-day Turkey.
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