Merkel’s Party Drops to Third in Bremen Elections Won by Social Democrats
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg
German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses during a news conference at the Christian Democratic Union headquarters in Berlin.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses during a news conference at the Christian Democratic Union headquarters in Berlin. Photographer: Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg
A man casts his vote in the election in the northern German city of Bremen as his dog waits. Photographer: Ingo Wagner/AFP/Getty Images
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party slumped to its worst result in Bremen in more than 50 years, finishing behind the Greens for the first time in a state election amid voter anger over the debt crisis and a flip-flop on nuclear power.
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union sank to third place in yesterday’s ballot in Bremen, Germany’s smallest state, while her Free Democratic Party coalition partner lost all its seats in a regional parliament for the third time this year. The main opposition Social Democrats cemented their 64-year hold on Bremen and can continue their coalition with the Greens of the past four years.
Merkel’s CDU has now lost support in all five state elections so far this year even as unemployment falls to a 19- year low and the economy grows a projected 3 percent for a second year. Party officials blamed the result in Bremen on the coalition’s reversal on support for atomic power after Japan’s Fukushima disaster and the need to keep aiding debt-strapped euro-area countries more than a year after the crisis erupted.
“Voters are deeply suspicious of the turmoil in international financial markets and confidence in the German coalition’s capacity to contain the troubles fades with every twist in the debt crisis,” Hans-Juergen Hoffmann, head of the Psephos polling company, said by phone.
The Social Democratic Party led by Mayor Jens Boehrnsen took 38.3 percent in Bremen, a city-state that includes the car- exporting port of Bremerhaven, preliminary results showed. The Greens won 22.7 percent to take second place and resume its coalition with the SPD. The Left Party took 5.8 percent.
FDP Crashes Out
Merkel’s CDU slid to 20.1 percent, its worst result since 1959, while the FDP crashed out of the state parliament with 2.6 percent, below the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats. The FDP was ejected from parliament in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt at elections this year, prompting a change of the party’s leadership that took effect on May 13.
“A government has hardly ever faced such a host of challenges,” Hermann Groehe, CDU general secretary, said on ARD television, citing the coalition decision to speed the exit from nuclear power after Fukushima and the need to handle “the hairy situation of over-indebted euro states.” The consequences, played out in Bremen, are “a bitter and painful defeat.”
Bremerhaven, as Germany’s main auto-shipping terminal, is benefiting from an economic upswing in Europe’s biggest economy that contrasts with struggling peripheral states such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland that have required international bailouts.
Car Exports
About 660,000 vehicles were shipped through Bremerhaven in the first four months of this year, an increase of 50 percent compared with the same period last year, Bild newspaper reported on May 14, citing Bremen-based BLG Logistics AG.
The world’s biggest auto transporter ship, the 265 meter- long (869 foot) Tonsberg owned by Wallenius Wilhelmsen AS of Norway, berthed at Bremerhaven on May 19 to take on 858 vehicles bound for the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, according to the BLG website. Three sister ships are due to be built by 2012, and all will be “regular visitors” to Bremerhaven, BLG said.
“Bremerhaven’s car exports may be booming but voters credit the German genius for car making, not the coalition,” Hoffmann of Psephos said.
Nationally, Merkel’s coalition trails the opposition SPD and Greens by as many as 13 percentage points in polls as euro- area bailouts sap voter faith and erode confidence in the euro.
German pressure on debt-strapped euro countries to cut spending and boost revenue is growing as the crisis returns to Greece, one year after a Europe-led bailout staved off its default. Merkel last week called on Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese to stop retiring earlier and taking more vacation time than Germans.
“The CDU has got into the difficult position where it has to win back trust,” Peter Altmaier, the CDU’s parliamentary manager in Berlin, said yesterday on ZDF television, citing the task of tackling the debt crisis. “That didn’t succeed this evening.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Parkin in Berlin at bparkin@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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