Tag archive for ‘election’
Elections in North Rhine-Westphalia – Another Cliffhanger
The election in Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia yesterday produced the second electoral cliffhanger in Europe in a week. The governing conservative-liberal coalition suffered a crushing defeat with the CDU losing more than 10 percentage points compared to the last election. It however narrowly defended its position as strongest party (with 34,6% of the [...]
Social Democracy: A Force That Is Distrusted But Not Yet Spent
Ordinary people will only start voting for social democrats once more if they ditch the policies that are making their lives a misery. Social-democratic parties were the main losers of the 2009 European elections. Green parties may have done well in their traditional strongholds (France, Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg), but their scores remain marginal elsewhere. And [...]
Revitalising Social Democracy
As well as new policies, social democrats need a strong ‘demand-side’ perspective, which focuses on renewing democracy in the party, the local state and the community. The electoral defeat of the German Social Democrats on 27 September was a disaster. The party slumped to its worst performance in the history of the Federal Republic, losing [...]
Does Europe’s Social Democracy still have a Future?
Social democracy will only be able to sustain a social Europe through strengthening European democratic institutions. German Social Democrats are lucky. Although in September they received their lowest vote in a federal election since the war– 23 per cent – things could have been worse. The result was still three percentage points more than they [...]
Elections in Greece: Bucking the Trend?
On Sunday’s election in Greece, the social democracts are favourites to win. Their bold programme of reform has hardly raised expectations, however – amidst rampant cynicism about politicians and anger towards the political class.
Taking Democracy in Europe seriously
Emanuel Barroso has been re-elected President of the European Commission. How strange! Why has the politician, who bears the largest individual responsibility for the steady decline in the efficiency and popular approval of European policies, been endorsed by all EU governments and obtained 382 votes of the 718 MEPs who participated in the election? This [...]
Will there be an ‘unconstitutional’ Election Victory in Germany?
Germany will vote for a new federal government on Sunday and the polls predict a tight race between the red-red-green and conservative-liberal camps. Given the party’s announcements about potential coalitions, however, there are only two possible governments: a conservative-liberal (preferred by Angela Merkel) or another grand coalition. Yet one of the important questions is how [...]
Power Games on the German Left – Lafontaine, the radical Riddle
On the evening of the 30th August the ghost of Weimar walked abroad in the Saarland. The social democrats of Heiko Maas were only just over three percentage points ahead of their left-wing rivals. This was uncannily reminiscent of the last Reichstag elections to be held in the Weimar Republic in November 1932. Then the [...]
CDU Campaign with fraudulent Ballot Paper?
On Sunday, there are state elections (Landtagswahlen) in the German state I grew up in (Saarland). And there is currently a big row about the governing Christian Democrats (CDU) using the ballot paper for stealth campaigning. The background: It is almost certain that the CDU will lose their absolute majority and there is a neck [...]
World Wide Webbed: The Obama Campaign’s masterful Use of the Internet
Just as President Barack Obama has shaken up the status quo in his first 100 days in office, his campaign overturned old formulas about how to win the presidency. The Obama campaign did not focus only on battleground states, but instead charged into states that previously had been solidly Republican turf. With a historic economic [...]
Why are we all so interested in American Presidential elections?
The 2008 American Presidential election has captured the attention and enthusiasm of millions of Europeans. Perhaps my little patch of north London is an unusual area, but one sees the occasional ‘Obama 08’ poster displayed in house windows. I am not sure we will see any more posters, for anyone, in the European Parliament elections [...]
