Political

German elections: getting your worst result since 1949 is a triumph

Angela Merkel is undoubtedly a big winner from the German federal election results – she gets to stay as Chancellor, and in a new coalition with her preferred partner, the FDP.

But it’s a a slightly odd sort of triumph, for her party’s vote share fell slightly (by 0.6% or 0.5% depending on whether you look at the constituency or party list vote). The combined CDU/CSU vote share was their worst in any election since 1945. That’s an odd sort of triumph really, even if they made a small net gain in seats.

Those lost votes didn’t go to the main opposition party, the SPD – who had their worst result ever, even including 1945. Instead, it went to a smattering of smaller parties – a result with overtones of UK politics where votes have become increasingly fragmented beyond not just the two main parties but the three main parties and nationalist parties.

The big gainer was the Liberal Democrats’ sister party, the FDP, whose votes and seats went up by roughly half, giving their best vote share since the Second World War.

One party that did not prosper from this fragmentation was the German Pirate Party. In their first federal election outing they won no seats, 0.1% of the constituency vote and 2.0% of the party list vote.

A challenge for any election result fans: how many other examples are there of an election where the top two parties both get their worst result for over 50 years?

2 responses to “German elections: getting your worst result since 1949 is a triumph”

  1. The implicit “… and still finish as the top two” is hard. Otherwise you could just pick transition elections, like Italy’s post-clean hands election of 1994.

    Republican 1992 was their worst since 1936, but while 43.0% was poor for the democrats, both McGovern and Mondale did worse. Worst and third-worst is pretty impressive though.

    1912, except that TR actually came second, so the Republicans weren’t a top-two party, and the Democrats did worse in 1904 and didn’t stand in the post-Civil War election of 1872.

    In reverse, 1860 – Lincoln’s 39.8% was the worst Republican number until 1912, and Douglas only got 29.5% in second, which is the worst Democrat result other than 1872 (when they didn’t really stand, though if you count Greeley as a Democrat, 1860 is the worst Democrat result ever).

    February 1974 in the UK is the worst for both parties since 1945, and only 1.7% better for the Tories than 45. Labour hadn’t done worse since 1931. I think that’s the closest in the UK.

    Rule of thumb for finding these – close election between two major parties with minor parties on the rise.

    Party systems haven’t been stable enough in most of Europe to find these; for instance, there isn’t a single French party that’s 50 years old and the only Italian party is the minor Republicans.

  2. The Tories got their worst share of popular vote in ANY general election of any kind since 1830 or so we were told in the Euro-election before last.

    This time I recall they put on 0.6%.

    Last time they went down to defeat in the subsequent UK Parliamentary Election . . .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All comments and data you submit with them will be handled in line with the privacy and moderation policies.