Before the Beatles even hit it big, the Christian Social Union (CSU) was dominating the state of Bavaria's politics with over fifty percent of the vote. As a matter of fact, during the last election CSU won 60.7 percent of the vote giving them quite a majority of the seats in the state's parliament. Now, however, CSU is in trouble. Last Sunday a new election was held and CSU has obviously lost a lot of its supporters. This year, CSU only won forty-three percent of the vote and which is the first time that it has been under fifty percent since the sixties. This drop is apparently due to the parties recent clumsiness in debates and with policies such as education, the new smoking ban and the scrapping of a multi-billion euro train link amoung other things. Bavarians claim that the party has fallen out of touch. More people are concentrating on being environmentally friendly while less people are going to church. Another fault of the party is that it neglegts the immigrant population in the state. After the vote, party head Erwin Huber and Bavarian Premier Gunther Beckstein both resigned.
CSU's downward spiral is also bad news for the Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats (CDU). CSU is CDU's sister party. Merkel will be up for election again approximately one year from now and if she loses support in all states in such a fashion she wont have a chance. Change is afoot.
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Welcome to our blog. Here McDaniel, Budapest students from the four corners of the globe post stories and commentary on today's political happenings in Europe, from Dublin to the Danube.
3 comments:
"Out of touch" advertising for Barack Obama much? ;)
What kind of change is Germany looking for? Which party do you think will takeover the CSU and CDU?
Laura K.
I think that the Germans are simply looking for a little bit more variety at this point. CSU has been in power since the sixties in Bavaria with over fifty percent of the seats in the regional house. They've made a few mistakes lately and a slight loss of power is the obvious result. The people are slightly dissatisfied. I don't think that anyone is going to replace either of the parties anytime soon. I just think that they will lose a few seats in their respective places. If anyone replaces CDU, my guess is that it would be SPD, the leading opposition party.
John
This is simply part of the democratic process. People are obviously beginning to feel the effects of the global economy caving in on them and Merkel and her party are unfortunately the ones in power during these harder times. If the situation stabalises within the next the next year it could be business as usual for the Christian Democrats. Christian or Christian in my opinion it all balls down to equity.
Andre B.P.
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