Volatile Voters
By Dr. Jackson Janes

Election Season
While the political fever in the U.S. continues to rise around the primaries, the race to the White House allows for plenty of room for speculation. The challenge for pollsters is trying to catch up with the voters. What's left, right, liberal or conservative is all up for grabs.

In Germany, political scenarios are also becoming harder to predict because political divisions might be turning less rigid. Voters are volatile and polls are unreliable. And the result is an increasingly difficult challenge in shaping a consensus and a government.

In January, the voters in two states, Lower Saxony and Hesse, sent messages to their respective leaders that they were not too thrilled about the way things are going in their Land. While the conservative coalition in Lower Saxony between the Free Democrats and the Christian Democrats held on to power, it lost some ground and now finds itself with an additional party, Die Linke, in the state parliament. How Die Linke will do remains to be seen but clearly there were enough unsatisfied voters to help them over the hurdle and provide them with a platform to make noise in Hanover.

Rise of Die Linke
In Hesse, the results have left that state with a caretaker government and much uncertainty as to how a new coalition can be formed. Here again, Die Linke made it into the state parliament and might possibly play a role in helping to form a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens, just by casting their votes for it as a minority government. That is against the wishes of the national SPD leadership, which has repeatedly said they reject any cooperation with Die Linke. It also contradicts Hesse's SPD leader, Andrea Ypsilanti, who made the same argument before and after the election. But she is tempted to go down that road now as a way of removing the current Minister-President Roland Koch and proving that Red-Green can work together. The question is whether the Greens would compromise on the role of Die Linke in making that possible.

The remaining options would be a coalition between the Christian Democrats and the SPD as in Berlin or among the SPD, the FDP, and the Greens. Both seem to be unlikely for the moment, largely because the liberals are being dogmatic about their refusal to ally with the Greens. At some point, maybe new elections will need to be called but that is no guarantee of a different outcome.

Next on Stage: Hamburg
On February 24, Hamburg's city elections may also generate uncertain outcomes. The current mayor, Ole von Beust, will probably lose his absolute majority for the Christian Democrats and most likely Die Linke will enter a another state parliament as a fifth party. Just like in Hesse, that raises the option of a SPD-led government in coalition with the Greens with the passive support of Die Linke.

But there might also be an option for some arrangement with the CDU and the Greens. It will all depend on the numbers and on the appetite for governing among the parties and what compromises they are willing to make to satisfy it. There have been and are many CDU-Green coalitions in other large cities, but there would need to be a lot of effort on both sides to configure a viable coalition. If it were to happen, it would be the first of its kind at the state level in the western part of Germany.

With the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats positioning themselves for next year's federal elections, the race to find the middle of an unpredictable and uncertain voting public is speeding up. Where is that middle ground, the area which Gerhard Schröder called "the new middle"? Except for Die Linke, all the other party platforms claim to represent it or be a part of it. And the so-called grand coalition in Berlin was formed around it, so it was argued.

Where is The Middle?
Being part of the middle these days seems to mean figuring out what your part represents and where it overlaps with other parts. And that may demand that the party platforms have to be rethought and reshaped in order to figure out where consensus building is possible. That can also be attractive to uncertain voters who would like to try some new ways of solving problems and are not satisfied with parties only complaining about the others.

In the U.S., this seems to be the message Barack Obama is using to achieve repeated success in the primaries - at least so far. Reaching across divisions is his main mantra.

The grand coalition was supposed to be about that as well, but it does not seem to be very inspiring. Voters are moving in different directions, leaving traditional touchstones for their choices behind. Whether it is at the local or national levels, they want to see where and how new alliances to solve problems and shape agendas can be achieved where it counts - in their own backyards. The two big players in Berlin seem to be going in circles around themselves at the moment. And they will watch what is happening around the country as they try to figure out how to prepare for next year.

They might also keep an eye on how things unfold between now and November 4 on the other side of the Atlantic - and maybe take some notes.

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This essay appeared in the February 22, 2008, AICGS Advisor.

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AICGS Coverage of the February 24 Hamburg Election