SIEG: Germany Can Expect Merkel Re-Election

Writing from Germany, Emily Sieg explains why Merkel and the CDU can expect victory in the upcoming German Elections.

Emily Sieg, Staff Writer
Ideology: Liberal | Writing From: Germany

In Germany, 2009 is known as the ‘Super Election Year.’  Not only have the European Union elections already taken place, but come September, a new state government may be formed.  The current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, plans to retain the top office as member of the Christian Democrats Union (CDU).  Her challenger, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, hails from the Social Democrats Party (SPD) and currently holds both positions as Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister.  Unfortunately for the opposition, Steinmeier’s chances do not look promising.

Political scrutiny of the two candidates has revealed peculiar results.  Critics characterize Mr. Steinmeier’s faults in much the same way as his rival’s.  Charisma is an attribute that can neither be applied to Merkel nor Steinmeier; their oratory skills do not tend to elicit enthusiastic responses from the crowd.  Each individual is seen as a moderate or even compromiser, who does not cater to the ‘true values’ of the party, be it left of center or right thereof.[1] An ambitious social or fiscal reformer does not seem to reside in either candidate.  Ultimately, the people of Germany simply are not quite sure what to praise, at least politically, in either the two.

Yet Angela Merkel has significant advantages over her rival, by merit of her gender and background.  A great many Germans, whether they agree with her politically or not, both respect, and are impressed by her.  She is a woman, and as Germany’s head of Government, perhaps the single most powerful woman in the world.  She is a physicist, whose politics often seem to follow scientific methods.  She is an Eastern German, who has taught the ‘Besserwessi’ [know-it-all West Germans] a thing or two.  She is a Christian Democrat but has married twice and does not have children.  Numerous polls show, that if the public could vote directly for a candidate, they would overwhelmingly vote for Angela Merkel.

But Germany does not vote for candidates, Germany votes for parties.  The electoral system mandates that the Chancellor must belong to the majority party.  However, since no party can attain a majority alone, coalitions must be formed.  Despite rumors of what the Greens really think of SPD or the problems FDP has with CDU/CSU, there are basically three possibilities to attain a majority in this election:

1.  CDU/CSU + FDP: Christian Democrats plus the ‘Liberals’
2.  SPD + Die Grünen: the Social Democrats plus the Greens.
3.  CDU/CSU + SPD: Social and Christian Democrats together (Grand Coalition)

Angela Merkel has it quite simple.  Either the CDU/CSU does particularly well and forms a majority coalition with the Liberals, or, more likely, CDU/CSU performs only with mediocrity and maintains the Grand Coalition.  Win or draw, Angela Merkel stays in power.  As a result, in order to become Chancellor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier would have to hope that his party, the SPD, does well enough to be able to break away from CDU/CSU and form a majority coalition with the Greens.  However, looking back at the EU election results, a sweeping SPD success does not look likely.

Currently, the SPD has the lowest representation that it has ever had in Brussels.  Compared to their previous representation, CDU/CSU lost even more support than did the Social Democrats; however, they still maintain more total representation than SPD.  The Greens did surprisingly well, as did the Liberals and even ‘the Left’ [die Linke].  With so many votes funneled to the other three parties, SPD or CDU will probably not be capable of forming a majority coalition that is not the ‘Grand Coalition.’  Thus, the likely outcome is only a slight modification of the status quo, namely another CDU/CSU coalition with SPD, with Mrs. Merkel leading the way.

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[1] In Germany, when the term ‘liberal’ [see die Liberalen: FDP] refers to the most ‘conservative’ party in the Bundestag, most standard English terms seem self-defeating.  It also remains to be considered, that the political party known as ‘the left’ [die Linke] refers to what an American Republican would probably label as ‘communist.’