Bavarian Conservatives Lose State Majority in Damaging Defeat

[reorg]

Source: Deutsche Welle

Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) lost its decades-old absolute majority as voters defected to smaller parties in a state election seen as a test of support ahead of national polls next year.

Computer projections showed a swing of more than 17 percentage points away from the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), forcing it to look for a coalition partner.

The CSU polled 43.4 percent of the vote on Sunday, Sept. 28, in its worst showing in half a century. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), which govern in a grand coalition with Merkel's party in Berlin, polled 18.6 percent, a decline of 1 percentage point from the last state election in 2003. CSU Secretary General Christine Haderthauer said the disastrous result was a black day for the party, which had ruled unchallenged for more than 40 years.

In the last state elections in 2003, the CSU polled 60.7 percent of the vote in the strongly Catholic state, where some of Germany's leading companies have their headquarters, including Siemens and BMW. The party's stated intent had been to retain its absolute majority in the 180-seat Parliament in Munich. "We have clearly failed to achieve our goal," Haderthauer said.

Read more: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3677656,00.html

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Apparently, the Bavarians had finally enough of one-party rule. Unfortunately, the Left did not profit from this. The right wing parties still have a comfortable majority.

In the local elections in Brandenburg yesterday (the state around the German capital, Berlin), the CDU lost on average some 10 percent and is now down from 28 to less than 19%.

[Eurobabe]

1. Yep, change is in the air

Merkel's chancellorship (next Fall) is up in the air now.

[David__77]

2. Bavaria, cradle of German fascism.

Bavaria is still a cesspool of backwardness and fascism. Hopefully something can change this, at some point.