The Changing SPD in the Schröder Era

Abstract

Public opinion data gathered from the latest surveys on Germany's upcoming parliamentary elections have turned out to be disheartening for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Without exception, the Social Democrats take second place and lag behind the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) by several percentage points (Fig. 1). Today, only a few months before the next parliamentary election, a repetition of the electoral victory to the extent of 1998 seems to be rather unlikely. We are therefore faced with the perplexing question of how the SPD could arrive at such a disadvantageous position given the historic electoral success of 1998, when the party achieved its second-best result at parliamentary elections since Word War II. Is the SPD powerless against a strong tendency of the German electorate to cast its ballot in favor of the CDU/CSU, which has pervaded almost the entire history of the Federal Republic of Germany and has been described as “a permanent discrimination of the SPD against the CDU/CSU in the competition of parties.” Or is this situation just a snapshot without deeper consequences for the party?