Hamburg election: worrying news for the Christian Democrats?

Thanks, JD, for drawing my attention for this one!

Germany's internal political situation has received little attention since the 2013 federal election. However, a number of regional elections have taken place recently have had a number of interesting results. Last week, it was the turn of Hamburg to go to the polls, and the results are somewhat interesting.

Hamburg

Hamburg is a city in the north of Germany. Like the cities of Berlin and Bremen, it is also a state, and accordingly, the Premier (as we know it in Australia) is called the Mayor, although he has the same powers as Germany's other state Premiers. It is the eleventh most populated state in Germany.

Hamburg uses a mixed-member proportional representation system. It has a 121 member unicameral parliament.

Hamburg was run by the left-wing Social Democrats from 1957 to 2001, making it generally a left-leaning state. In the 2001 election, however, they lost government, with the centre-right Christian Democrats forming government with the controversial right-wing Law and Order party and the liberal Free Democrats. Law and Order collapsed in 2004, but the Christian Democrats formed a majority government.

In 2008, the Christian Democrats lost their majority, but formed a coalition with the Green Party in a rather unusual pairing. The 2011 election was a disaster for the Christian Democrats; they lost half their seats, and the Social Democrats won a majority.

The 2015 results

Party analysis

The Social Democrats will find this election result good news. They won 58 seats; a loss of four, but still a good result, and one that will allow them to form government with the party of their choice. Given that they won only 32% of the vote in Hamburg at the federal election in 2013, it is a good result for the local government.  Such a result indicates that the coalition with the Christian Democrats at the federal level hasn't had any immediate backlash. The most likely coalition looks likely to be with the Greens.

The Christian Democrats are unlikely to enjoy this result much. A swing away from an already weak party seems to show that voters are unhappy with their performance in opposition. They have remained consistent in polling at the federal level, meaning that the result doesn't seem to be any backlash against the Merkel government.

There's not much to say about the Green performance in Hamburg. It's a good result; their equal third best in the state since their formation. It's very close to the Christian Democrat result, but more out of a lack of support for the Christian Democrats than any serious Green surge.

The Left only entered the Hamburg parliament in 2008. This is not unusual for states that were in West Germany and had had no serious far-left presence. Under the Weimar Republic (1919-1935), there was a big Communist presence, but that faded away after World War 2. They managed to do well, gaining three seats from  but it seems unlikely that they will be a serious challenge to the established parties in Hamburg.

The liberal Free Democrats did well. They polled about the same as last election, and won the same number of seats (nine). However, this is against the backdrop of serious decline for the party, which lost all its federal seats in 2013 and has been losing seats at the state level just as quickly. The result in Hamburg may not represent a turning point for the party, but it shows that they still have some support.

There has been lots of discussion about the Alternative for Germany party lately. This party has a somewhat conflicting message; some members are pro-European Union but anti-common currency, while some are more anti-EU and anti-immigration. They continued their run of success, winning 6.1% and eight seats. They had won seats in every state election since the federal election, and the polls say that they are likely to win 6-7% federally. However, as the story of the Pirates (who won 1.6%) has shown us, new entrants into the German political landscape are not always welcomed warmly.

The rise and fall of the German Pirate Party

Parties with a focus on internet issues have become much more prominent recently. Like the wave of socialist parties in the 1910s, and the wave of green parties in the 1980s, internet parties have spread throughout the globe. However, so far most have met with little success. There are a few exceptions; the Icelandic Pirates have representation in the Althingi (Icelandic parliament), the Swedish Pirates won European Parliament seats, and the German Pirate Party has received some seats in state legislatures and in the European Parliament. The latter party is the subject of this post.

After winning 9% of the vote and 15 out of 152 seats in the Berlin Parliament in 2011, the German Pirate Party shot to national prominence. The result put them above both the liberal Free Democratic Party and the far-right National Democratic Party, both parties with a long history in Germany. The Free Democratic Party had an especially bad time; they have been in the federal parliament since 1946.

The Berlin elections were the last to be held in 2011, but the party managed to win seats in the state of Saarland in 2012, winning 4 out of 51 and 7.4% of the vote. They also won 20 seats out of 237 and 7.8% in North Rhine-Westphalia and 6 out of 69 and 8.2% in Schleswig-Holstein.

By now. the media were treating the Pirates as a political party with an excellent chance of entering the Bundestag. The party were beginning to poll in the low teens. And while the temptation was to treat them as a joke, the traditionally close balancing of parties in the German Bundestag would mean that they would have to be taken very seriously by the German political establishment.

The party was positioned to make a big splash in the German political system. The poor polling of the Free Democrats, a party with a somewhat similar political view, meant that they could attempt to attract other liberal-minded voters. With the Social Democratic Party moving further to the left and the Free Democrats becoming irrelevant, there was a space in the German political system, and the Pirates were poised to enter that space.

However, just as the Pirates looked certain of entering the Bundestag (German federal parliament), the party began to lose support. It's hard to point to any single reason why they began to slide, but here are a few potential reasons.

• Voters not taking the Pirates seriously, especially liberal-minded voters who may have supported a party of that sort without the Pirate symbolism.
• Infighting between party leaders
• Inability to appeal to voters outside their urban base
• Focusing on narrow issues that many voters do not care about, like online surveillance.

As a result, the Pirates peformed poorly at the federal election. They only won 2.2% of the vote, which was below the 5% threshold required to enter the Bundestag. They fell further at the European Parliament election, winning only 1.45% of the vote in an election that is usually perceived as an opportunity to elect protest candidates. However, due to the abolition of the 3% threshold, the Pirates were able to elect 1 Member of the European Parliament out of 99.

The future of pirate politics

So, where is the German Pirate Party headed? Well, they have polled very, very badly in recent state elections. They have not managed to make any further impact, and while they may stick around in the Berlin parliament, they are unlikely to re-elect any other members of state parliaments.

One may ask then, why has the Pirate experiment so far failed? New political movements have entered worldwide, and the internet is a huge change that surely should cause some change in personal voting habits.

The simple fact is that voters have so far tended not to vote with the internet in mind. There are notable exceptions, but the internet may not end up creating a great political movement. Unlike the green movement, the Pirate candidates of 2014 do not have the issue of nuclear weapons to use for political purposes. The lack of diversification of the 1980s Greens was also aided by the economy not being a big political issue, while the Pirates' lack of an economic policy is poorly timed given that voters are viewing the economy as a big issue.

Who knows, perhaps the Pirates will rise again. Perhaps, when the economic crisis is over, internet surveillance will hit the headlines once more, and the Pirates will suddenly become relevant. However, in times like these, the Pirate Party is unlikely to make a serious and long-term impact.