Merkel's centre-right bloc beaten in state election

[villager]

Source: Reuters

Merkel's centre-right bloc beaten in state election

(Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right bloc suffered another defeat on Sunday in a regional election in Germany's poorest state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with both her conservatives and their Free Democrat allies losing support.

A first projection by the ARD network at 1615 GMT showed Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) falling to 24 percent from the 28.8 percent won in the sparsely populated state on the Baltic shore in 2006. It was the CDU's worst result ever there.

The Free Democrats (FDP) were only an opposition party in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern assembly in Schwerin but crashed out with a result below the 5 percent threshold -- just 3.1 percent after 9.6 percent in 2006.

The euro zone crisis loomed over the campaign ahead of a key vote in the Berlin parliament on euro zone bailout reforms in late September.

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Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/09/04/germany-election-idUSL5E7K40KJ20110904

[No Elephants]

1. Center right ......

"n 1998, with First Lady Hillary Clinton, From began a dialogue with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders, and the DLC brand -- known as The Third Way -- became a model for resurgent progressive governments around the globe. In April 1999, he hosted an historic Third Way forum in Washington with President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Prime Ministers Wim Kok of the Netherlands and Massimo D'Alema of Italy."


http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=1131&kaid=86&subid=191

[FarCenter]

2. Merkel's conservatives slip in local elections while opposition gains steam

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15364240,00.html

[DissedByBush]

3. I'm not surprised

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is in the former communist East Germany. I was surprised anything but left or far-left could even get as much support as they had.

Quite often those poor areas are still reeling economically from the fall of East Germany. Communism had so destroyed the infrastructure and caused so much environmental damage that they're still pretty bad off despite hundreds of billions of DM and Euros poured into them after reunification.

Many don't remember that 40 years of communist rule threw them down a hole that they've only had 20 years trying to dig out of.

They just remember when everybody had jobs, and they want them back.

[David__77]

4. East Germany built up the infrastructure, left to rot by the unified state.

East Germany was doing well economically up till 1989. There was no serious crisis, as noted by Western specialists until there was a lot of historical revisionism after the East German authorities ceded power.

[DissedByBush]

5. The infrastructure was old, outdated and environmentally catastrophic

Companies like Volkswagen that took over factories there practically had to rebuild from scratch.

What VW wanted to use to make modern cars, the Easterners were using to make Trabbis. The old lines, designed in the 50s and not updated since, simply couldn't handle it.

And, yes, I do know some former East Germans.