Angie and Guido

Sounds like an old Billy Joel song, doesn't it.  But no, it's just election night here in Germany.

So Germany's Grand Coalition is over.  The next government will be one of the Conservatives (led by Angela Merkel) and the Liberals (led by Guido Westerwelle). 

If you're not German, here's how it works: traditionally there were two big parties, the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, and two little ones, the Liberals and the Greens.  The Social Democrats would take the Greens as junior partners in government, while the Conservatives would team up with the Liberals.  (In Germany, "Liberals" are sort of the free market business-friendly party.  Their positive image is "hard-driving technocrats".  Their negative image is "smug, greedy nerds".)  

But in the last couple of elections a fifth party, the "Left", has thrown the old system out of whack.  After the last election, the only way to form a government was for the two big parties, Conservatives and Social Democrats, to form a "grand coalition" of the center-left and center-right. 

To everyone's surprise, this worked tolerably well.  But apparently Germany's voters were tired of it, because they've given the Conservatives and Liberals just enough votes to form a coalition of their own.

It's been a very quiet, restrained campaign.  Frankly, I hardly noticed it.  Claudia put on some nice clothes and walked downtown -- okay, "downtown" in Fladungen is three blocks away -- and the whole thing took five minutes.

Otherwise, a gorgeous autumn day.  Dinner at the in-laws, some outside time with the kids.  Early bedtime. 

Comments

[Bernard Guerrero]

I knew I could count on you for a little German electoral color. Allow me to request additional commentary on the following, if you have time:

-FDP's best result ever (yay!); cannibalizing the CDU?

-What happens with the nuke plants?

-Any chance this will last for a while? Looking from a distance, I'm not sure what either the FDP or CDU/CSU gets out of it. Any movement by the CDU towards the FDP's axis opens it to weakness on its left flank. The FDP will find it difficult to get anything meaningful done regarding its platform.

-Record low turnout.

[Tony Zbaraschuk]

I wonder how long it will take for things to coalesce into two parties? (I think in Britain it took a century or so...)

[Nich Hills]

Loved your summary of the Liberal Democrats, Doug. Although had hoped that your description of Germany's New Zealand style electoral system might have more detail than, "the whole thing took five minutes." (That might also have gone some way to answering Tony Z's question at #2.)

Glad to hear your grand autumn is matching our present gorgeous spring.