On the surface of things, Germany is heading into its Sept. 27 general election in an optimistic mood. The latest numbers suggest that the economy may be picking up again. The potentially most explosive issue in foreign policy -- the participation of 4,200 German troops in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan -- has hardly figured in campaign debates. And for the moment the current chancellor, the conservative Angela Merkel, holds a comfortable lead in the polls over her main rival, the Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
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Germany's friends and allies might well wish that this were the end of the story." But in fact there is plenty of uncertainty lurking beneath the surface. Germany's political system is suffering from a combination of complacency and fear. Urgently needed economic reforms have languished. And notes of ambiguity are creeping into Berlin's hitherto ultra-predictable foreign policy.
At the moment, the dominant mood can best be defined as apathy. Some analysts suspect that this election could well be characterized by record-low turnout -- not all that surprising, considering that the current government is based on a stultifying "grand coalition" of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) that has governed for the past four years. Polls show that around 40 percent of the electorate haven't made up their minds yet how they will vote. All this is remarkable for a country where voters have traditionally harbored strong party affiliations. Thomas Petersen of the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research notes that, as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, the two big mainstream political parties of CDU and SPD could each consistently count on drawing 40 percent of the votes in national elections. That made the country's political landscape steady, predictable, and consensus-oriented -- read "downright dull."
This appears to have changed for good. The power of the unions and traditional working-class groups that used to make up the bulk of the Social Democrats' support has been steadily waning. The weakening of the Catholic Church's hold on more conservative voters has had a comparable effect -- though to a lesser extent -- on the core of the CDU. And the smaller parties on the right and left -- the Liberals and the Greens -- have benefited. All of this could complicate post-election politicking considerably. The main danger is that an ambiguous result could lead to long and paralyzing coalition negotiations at a time when decisions on larger issues urgently need to be made. The old predictability, in short, is no longer a given.
Plus, nowadays there's a wild card: the Left Party, created from the ruins of the old East German communists and the disaffected left wing of the old SPD. The Left talks about "overcoming capitalism" and questions the long-standing alliance with the United States -- and correspondingly rejects Germany's participation in NATO's Afghan campaign. Though most Germans probably don't accept every plank in that program, polls show that about two-thirds of them consistently agree with the Left's skepticism on Afghanistan. Constanze Stelzenmüller, of the Berlin Office of the German Marshall Fund, says the reason the issue hasn't flared up much during the election campaign so far is that all the main political parties except for the Left support the Bundeswehr's presence in Central Asia, meaning that no one has much of an interest in allowing it to become a marquee issue. "That could translate into a vote for the Left on election day," Stelzenmüller says. In particular, she notes, the Social Democrats "are being torn down the middle" as frustrated left-wingers desert them for the Left.
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