Saturday, May 18, 2019

Bremen Story

Bremen is holding a city election in about a week, and it will lay out the significant change that has occurred with German politics.  It's a city of 550,000 and has been a SPD Party stronghold for decades (since the war ended).  Bremen is one of the three cities in Germany which are city-states (Hamburg and Berlin are the other two).  So it's not just a city election....it's a state election as well.

Numbers on polling?  Well...back in 2015, the SPD won easily with around 39-percent of the vote.  The CDU was a distant 3rd with 20-percent.  The Greens were in 2nd place with 22-percent. 

Right now?  The SPD is marginally pulling around 24-percent, and the CDU rests at the top with 26-percent.  The Greens?  They've fallen back to around 18-percent.  The odds are heavily in favor of the CDU winning for the first time in the city....in seventy years.

The coalition?  Well....no one can say for sure.  It appears the only options are CDU-SPD or CDU-Greens-FDP. 

What this suggests on the SPD Party?  Ever since the 2017 national election, they've been unable to bundle up a message and convince the general public to buy off on their dynamics. 

This election won't be a front-page story, but it does tell a woeful tale on trends. 

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