German politics: Teutonic shift

The Social Democrats' poor result in the Saarland disguises deeper changes

HEAVY losses for the ruling Social Democrats (SPD), big gains for the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU): state elections in Germany, of which there are half a dozen this year, have become predictable. In the Saarland on September 5th, the SPD saw its vote drop by 13.5 points to 30.8%, its worst result there since the war, while the CDU vote rose by two points to 47.5%.

Yet the sameness disguises a significant change. With each election it becomes clearer that Germany's political landscape has shifted. Gone are the days when there were two big parties, the CDU and SPD, with a smaller third party tipping the scale. (The Free Democrats - FDP - long played the balancing role, but they have now been overtaken by the Greens.) This set-up is changing in three ways.

First, turnout is dropping. It used to be above 70% in the old West Germany, where voting was seen as a civic duty. But only 55% turned out in the Saarland on Sunday, the smallest turnout in a regional election in western Germany since the war. This suggests that the voters are losing either their interest in politics or their faith in institutions. Over half now think “it doesn't matter” who gets their support.

The growing frustration with politics means, second, that the two big parties are shrinking. The SPD, which is in government and has pushed through some structural reforms, is suffering most. Many analysts now say that the SPD is no longer a people's party, given that its national support stands at around 25%. In the Saarland, it has lost almost half its votes in five years.

But the CDU is suffering too. Despite its increased share of the poll in the Saarland, it lost 44,000 votes, and surveys suggest that in the country at large the party may have peaked. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, where the regional election next May could decide Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's future, the conservatives are no longer guaranteed to win by a landslide. Disaffected former SPD voters are beginning to fret that a CDU government might pass even tougher reforms than Mr Schroder.

Third, smaller parties are gaining ground. In the Saarland, besides the FDP and the Greens, with 5.2% and 5.6% respectively, three other parties scored over 2%. The extreme-right National Democratic Party (NPD) got 4%, only just under the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament, fomenting fears that right-wing populist parties may be on the rise in Germany. In Saxony, which has an election on September 19th, the NPD is expected to pass the threshold.

The two parties that are most likely to shake up Germany's party system, however, did not make much of a showing in the Saarland. East Germany's former communists, now the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), won only 2.3%. But in the east the group has become the number-two political force, according to polls, thanks partly to weekly protests against labour-market reform. In Brandenburg, which will hold an election on September 19th, the PDS could even take top spot.

In the west, the disruptive role of the PDS could be taken by a new left-wing party, which trade-unionists and defectors from the SPD are trying to launch. If they succeed, the new party could win anything between 2% and 11%. How well it does may depend on one man: Oskar Lafontaine, the maverick former SPD chairman, ex-finance minister and one-time premier of the Saarland. He has threatened to defect to the new party unless Mr Schroder resigns and scraps his reforms.

Is Germany becoming an “unstable” democracy, as some worry, or even entering a period reminiscent of the Weimar republic? Such fears seem overblown. As Franz Walter, a political scientist at Gottingen University argues, the shifts in Germany's political landscape match themakeover of its welfare state. Other European countries that have enacted reforms have also seen the emergence of populist parties of the right (the Netherlands) or left (Denmark, Finland), he notes.

Strangely, such a development may be Mr Schroder's only chance to hold on to his job after the federal elections in 2006. A new left-wing party could allow him to continue pushing through reforms while keeping disaffected SPD voters from voting CDU or simply skipping the polls. If the new party makes it into parliament, western left-wingers (as well as the PDS) are likely to tolerate another Schroder government rather than letting the conservatives rule. Just as the Germans have to adapt to a more flexible and market-driven economy, they may have to get used to a political system in which majorities shift around more frequently.

The SDP's poor result in the Saarland disguises deeper changes, including lower turnouts, and smaller parties, including those on the extremes, are gaining ground,

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