Surely this merits a thread? Given that euro observers have saying that everything’s on hold until after the German elections.
Quite interesting election, actually. It looks like the incumbent CDU/CSU (centre-right) will just miss getting the rare prize of an absolute majority in the Bundestag. Still, Merkel will remain chancellor for a third term. She will probably have to go back into coalition with the SPD (centre-left), because her partners over the last term, the FPD (pro-market liberals), have had a terrible result and in fact they may fall short of the 5% threshold needed to have any Bundestag members at all. They could even get fewer votes than the new AfD party (euro-sceptics), although it looks like AfD won’t make 5% either.
What happened to FPD? Seems kinda weird that one partner in a coalition should have their fortunes fall so sharply while the other seems likely to cruise to an easy re-election.
Sorry for the typo in the OP - that should be “FDP”, not “FPD”.
As to your question, I really don’t know. I know that the last election was a historically good result for the FDP, and not so good for the CDU. So maybe disaffected CDU/CSU voters have returned to the fold this time?
For quite a while now they’ve had the problem that effectively their platform was very limited. They were all about lower taxes. They liked to claim other issues like civil liberties, deregulation, debt reduction and more general economic policy but never got much done in those areas. They also no longer managed to establish many lasting prominent political figures.
Up to a point they could get away with that because they contributed important seats to the conservative half of the political spectrum as the natural coalition partner of Merkel’s Christian Democrats. They had to achieve 5% of the vote to be represented in parliament. That means that in bad times they could usually count on some tactical votes from conservative voters beyond their core constituency who wanted to prevent what happened today, i.e. that they miss the threshold and take 4.8% of the vote to the grave.
They were in the opposition from 1998 to 2009. During the 2005-2009 term the government was formed by a ‘grand coalition’ of the two major parties, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, because there was no other politically viable majority. Merkel benefitted much more from that, but many conservative voters greatly preferred a more homogeneous Christian Democrat/FDP coalition and quite a few voted for the FDP instead. That inflated their results in the 2009 election.
During the most recent term the FDP achieved very little politically, especially no significant tax cuts. Their leadership did not end up looking very good and they got mixed but mostly bad results in state-level elections. They failed to communicate a clear vision for the future and in the end they were reduced to begging for proxy votes for Merkel.
Too little record, too little vision and a lack of convincing candidates. This time it didn’t work.
Bolding mine - that’s actually all but sure. With CDU/CSU falling short of a majority, it’s possible, though not likely, that the smaller parties will join forces and form a coalition. The fact that the possibility exists will lead SPD to play hard to get in initial negotiations with CDU. In any case, just because Merkel won the elections does not guarantee that she will return as the Kanzlerin.
My understanding is that a coalition not involving the CDU is very unlikely, because the SPD couldn’t stomach an alliance with the left-wing Linke, and its connections to the old GDR communist party.
That’s why I said ‘possible, though not likely’. Nonetheless, it’s important to point out that Merkel is not back in the Kanzlersamt yet, in spite of her great victory. Indeed, this victory is going to prove to be a Pyrrhic one. Without FDP, the strategic position of the Union is much worse because they now rely on SPD for a coalition. SPD, in turn, can look to the left, or even pretend to be looking to the left, which puts them in a position to play hard-to-get.
In spite of her victory it looks like no one want’s to play with Angie. The Free Democrats are out & Merkel isn’t having any luck forming a coalition with the Greens or the SPD. I can understand why the SPD is so reluctant; look what happened to them after the last grand coalition (or the Free Democrats now). In theory Merkel could form a minority government, but Germany hasn’t had one since the Weimer Republic and it could be toppled at any time if the SPD, Greens, & Left agree on a new chancellor (which seems unlikely in the extreme).