German Federal Election Can End With Two Possible Scenarios
When the social-democrat Willy Brandt decided to leave the huge coalition with the christian-democrats back in 1969, joining an alliance with the liberals, party fellows like Herbert Wehner and Helmut Schmidt promptly condemned the movement made by the SPD leader. Since 1966, West Germany was being governed by the CDU member Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who was incubment Prime-Minister after the resignation of Ludwig Erhard, previous CDU leader. Erhard lost the coalition with FDP that year over budget issues, and Kiesinger called the SPD to form a government majority with the social-democrats for the first time in the post-war era. But after Willy Brandt, the then SPD leader, decided to leave the government and brokered the coalition with the FDP liberals to dispute the 1969 election, things got way more uncertain in a country that, after the Second World War, found political stability under the CDU rule of Konrad Adenauer from 1949 to 1963.
Brandt was elected Kanzler in that aforementioned election, marking the first time the SPD had won a federal election since Hermann Müller, who held the Chancellor position from 1928 until 1930, and putting an end to 20 years of CDU rule. FDP chairman Walter Scheel succeeded Brandt as vice-president and foreign minister, since he occupied both posts in the previous government. The SPD-FDP alliance sparked protests from the CDU, who accused the liberals of being faithless. Even as Kiesinger achieved the relative majority, the absolute majority stood with the social-democrats and the liberals. Kiesinger was succeeded as chairman by Rainer Barzel in 1971.
However, the political instability in West Germany did not ended up there. Brandt’s First Cabinet relied on an absolute majority of just twelve votes. But Brandt’s Ostpolitik, an attempt on the normalization of the relations between West and East Germany, resulted in many party switches from SPD and FDP, which led to the 1972 snap election.
Brandt resigned in 1974 after the “Guillaume Affair”, after one of his personal aides was discovered being actually a Stasi agent from East Germany. Helmut Schmidt took over the Chancellery, and the SPD-FDP coalition lasted until 1982, when the liberals quit the government and a new election in 1983 led CDU chairman Helmut Kohl to the Chancellery alongside with the FDP. However, 1983 elections marked the debut of a new important party in Germany’s Bundestag: The Greens (Die Grünen), led by the feminist-activist Petra Kelly, who secured 27 seats at the parliament and brought to the table environmental issues to German politics.
Helmut Kohl’s government with the liberals lasted from 1982 to 1998. The victory in 1983 election, whose alliance with the FDP and the CSU (the CDU regional party in Bavaria that always follows the CDU in the elections) secured the christian-democrats and the liberals 278 seats in the Bundestag, saw the Greens only losing seats in 1990 election to the PDS (the socialist-democrats) after the reunification of both Germanys. The CDU gained many votes in the former East Germany area, which was responsible for the great advantage of the dominant alliance over the leftist coalition.
1994 elections marked again a special moment for the Greens. The party became the third-largest party in the Bundestag, ahead of the FDP liberals. When Kohl lost the 1998 election to the SPD, the Greens united themselves with the SPD in its first ever government. Gerhard Schröder was the new Kanzler, and the alliance with the Greens lasted to 2005, when CDU formed a grand coalition with SPD (that did not happen since 1969) to give the new Kanzlerin Angela Merkel the vast majority of the Bundestag. Merkel only did not rule with SPD during one tenure, between 2009 and 2013.
2017 elections marked again a new party appearance in the parliament. The populist right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) won 94 seats and became the third largest party in its debut in the Bundestag. With a discriminatory and xenophobic discourse, the party gained attention from the unsatisfied Germans with Merkel’s immigration politics.
After a period of high pro-Europeanism, larger GDP per capita and low unemployment in Germany, the remarkable (and controversial) Angela Merkel’s fourth and last cabinet finally comes to an end. But unlike the last elections where SPD and CDU formed a grand coalition to rule Germany, the 2021 election have been marked by the disruption between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. And it also became the most fragmented election in the post-war era where 8 parties will be represented in the next Bundestag. And that generated a problem to the announced SPD winner in the figure of its chairman Olaf Scholz: on how to form a new alliance without the CDU/CSU. This was the worst CDU/CSU defeat ever, losing 50 seats from the previous election and winning only 196 seats.
But with a highly popular government and a social and economic legacy made by Angela Merkel, how did the CDU lose so many seats? Three explanations comes to mind when we think about the CDU actions on the last years. First, the weariful and unpopular figure of the party’s leader Armin Laschet was responsible for a failure in the polls. Second, the alliance between the CDU and the far-right AfD in regional government of Thuringia in 2020 crumbled the credibility of the then party’s leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who failed to make Thuringian party leaders heed ban on alliances with the AfD. And third, besides the economic growth and leadership in European policies, Merkel did not bring to Germany a digital modernization and a strong awareness behind climate change to the table. Merkel is an environmental enthusiast, but according to recent polls, little was done by the Kanzlerin to curb global warming during her tenure, which had pulled away young people alongside with internet issues. In Germany, internet is considered extremely expensive and bad, with low speed connections and poor services.
In a scenario where the CDU is out of the negotiations table, Olaf Scholz would have two options to form a new alliance for the Bundestag. The first one would be a coalition between the SPD, The Greens and The Left (Die Linke, the left wing party who succeeded the PDS), putting an entire left-wing coalition to command the parliament. But the problem is that The Left got just 39 seats, and the alliance would be impossible. The second and possible option is to form the so-called “traffic light coalition”, with SPD-Grünen-FDP (each colour representing a light colour, as red for the SPD, yellow for the FDP and green for the Grünen). Perhaps this will be the first time where three major parties will form a coalition to govern the country. On 7th October, the liberals and the greens stated they had initiated the negotiations to form the alliance with the SPD, but the FDP leader, Christian Lindner, did not discard a possible negotiation with the CDU, what means that a new CDU government under Armin Laschet and the FDP and the Greens is still possible (known as the “Jamaican coalition”).
After 16 years of Angela Merkel’s government, Germany will miss one of the greatest and most pragmatic leaders of all time. But the people seemed to learn from Merkel’s mistakes. The polls advised a new switch in German politics, turning the country to a more social-democrat and center-left approach. But that doesn’t mean Merkel is going to be deviated from German history — the country still keeps its gratitude in many of Merkel’s policies. But it is a time to change. Fact is that Die Grünen and the liberals will almost certainly be in the new government, but who will be the head of it will depend more on the negotiation’s ability, and Olaf Scholz seems to be better on it than Armin Laschet. But even as the possibility of an SPD Chancellery is higher than a christian-democrat one, the uncertainty hovers above Germany’s Federal Election. And this can take days to solve, or weeks, even months.
