Germany’s election. Wagging the west

How the east will determine the outcome of Gerhard Schroder's gamble

IF GERMANY were still divided into communist east and democratic west, the outcome of its election next month would be clear. The Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Free Democrats (FDP) would win a comfortable majority, with the outgoing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens falling below 40%. And the new Left Party would struggle to cross the 5% threshold for seats in parliament.

Since unification, however, politics in Germany has become more volatile. In recent weeks, the overall CDU/FDP lead has been slipping, especially in the five states that made up the former East Germany (minus Berlin). It is not, as some assert, that elections are won in the east; but they can certainly be lost there. It is this, not the fact that Angela Merkel, the CDU's candidate for chancellor, comes from the region which explains why the east looms so large in the current campaign.

The eastern states have around 11m voters, fewer than in North Rhine-Westphalia alone. More important than voter numbers is the strength of the local ex-communist party, which has now joined with a western partner to form the Left Party. Yet what makes the east's voters really count is that they are so fickle. In the west many voters stay loyal to one party (though less than in the past); in the east they change their minds according to the issues or the candidates. This year, each of the three main parties has topped the opinion polls in the east at least once.

Despite the east's importance in elections, most western politicians tend to ignore it the rest of the time. The east's economic and social woes have played little recent role in German politics. Chancellor Gerhard Schroder declared in 1998 that the east was a “matter for the boss”, but he soon lost interest. Yet he is the politician who has benefited most from the east. In 1998, he won in large part because voters in the east were disillusioned with his predecessor, Helmut Kohl, who had promised them “flourishing landscapes” after unification. Four years on, Mr Schroder won again, thanks to catastrophic floods in the east and the looming war in Iraq (the first allowed Mr Schroder to show solidarity by offering prompt aid, the second let him demonstrate his pacifism, a value that resonates in the east).

Things will be different this time, even though the SPD has regained some ground in the east (as it has in the west). Voters in the east remain disappointed by the government's economic and employment failures - and this is unlikely to change by polling day. The big question is whether they will opt instead for the CDU, or for the Left Party. At present, the Left Party has the upper hand: the polls put it ahead of both the CDU and the SPD in the east.

Contrary to what one might have expected, given her origins in the east, Ms Merkel is not an asset for the CDU there. In fact, more voters in the east would prefer to keep Mr Schroder than to give her a chance. This is because she is not seen as an Ossi, but as just another western politician. There is not much she can do about this: if she plays the card of her roots or runs a special campaign in the east, as some have suggested she should, she risks losing votes in the west.

It does not help that Jorg Schonbohm, a western CDU politician who is now a minister in Brandenburg, recently blamed the “forced proletarianisation” of the east's rural population under the communists for the case of a mother who had killed nine of her babies soon after their births. He was criticised for seeming to suggest that killing babies was typically eastern behaviour. Edmund Stoiber, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, also caused a stir by attacking the east's political influence, saying “the frustrated cannot determine Germany's future.”

Ms Merkel's best bet may lie in presenting herself as proof that change - and thus further reforms - are necessary and can lead to success. As the weekly Die Zeit recently noted, it would be a huge historical irony if Ms Merkel became Germany's first eastern chancellor since unification, but still lost on her home turf against barely reconstructed former communists.

Article discusses the importance of the former eastern part of Germany in the general election of September 2005.