GERMANY’S GENERAL election sprang into life yesterday, a month before polling day, as dramatic losses in two of three state elections put Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) on the defensive.
Although the party is leading in national polls, the CDU was facing the loss of power in the central state of Thüringen, and in Saarland, on the French border.
Meanwhile, leaders of the Social Democrats (SPD) hope positive results yesterday will motivate the party out of opinion poll lows.
Within minutes of polls closing yesterday, Germany’s political leaders were spinning the results in Berlin. “I’ve heard many times that the general election has already been decided, but this evening’s results show this is a mistake,” said Frank Walter Steinmeier, the SPD foreign minister who hopes to oust Angela Merkel as chancellor despite a 15 per cent gap in polls.
The SPD’s path to power in Saarland and Thüringen is dependent on sharing power with the reformed communist Left Party, headed by former SPD leader Oskar Lafontaine, a decade after walking out of the Schröder government.
Mr Steinmeier has given local SPD leaders in Saarland and Thüringen a free hand to decide whether to join forces with the Left Party, but has ruled out a similar alliance after the federal poll.
In Saxony, the Left Party finished second behind the CDU with twice the support of the SPD.
At CDU headquarters, leaders made the most of their one victory in Saxony, where the party can form a government with its preferred partners, the liberal Free Democrats. Ahead of the election, CDU leaders are determined to sow doubt among voters about the SPD’s intentions with the Left Party.
“This evening’s results show that an SPD-Green government doesn’t have a majority in Germany with the Greens alone; it needs a third partner to govern,” said Ronald Pofalla of the CDU. “The voters have a right to what the SPD is thinking now.”
The vote in Saxony was noteworthy for another reason: despite significant losses, the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party was re-elected to the Dresden parliament, a first for the extremists.