Focus (the German magazine) went out in the last day or two, and asked Civey (the polling company) to ask the big question....'will the SPD Party (the left-of-center party) be around in ten years'.
Several years ago, they'd asked the question, and only around 4-percent said 'no'.
Well....this time around, it was roughly one-in-three German adults who said 'no'.
There are three basic issues confronting them and their spiral downward:
1. Chancellor Merkel has geared the CDU to be the ultimate center-center party. It's not discussed a lot, but if you looked over the top twenty positions of the left-of-center folks....Merkel is right there in the middle of their circle, and making it hard to identify any major differences.
2. Lets face facts....the Greens have emerged in the last decade, and own around a dozen major positions that were typically SPD-only.
3. Finally, over the past twenty years, it's been hard for the SPD to find anyone with charisma and charm....to front their causes across the landscape to the typical German voter.
How I think this will end? In the next election (whether in an early-election for 2020 or in the current schedule one for fall of 2021)....the SPD will find itself in the 12-to-14 point range, and shocking a lot of the older journalists on their graceful fall, with voters going to the Greens.
The SPD will fire the bosses, and bring in new but marginal bosses for the next four years. That next election (probably around 2025)...will see them drift down to around 9-to-10 percent in the national voting. The Greens will pick up the folks walking away.
So you reach 2029, and the ultimate shock of the SPD picking up around 7-percent of the national vote. Some type of discussion will occur on whether they should merge with the Greens or Linke Party, and by 2030....the SPD will quietly disappear from the scene.
A curious end for a party that in the 1960s could draw 50-percent of the vote in national elections here in Germany.
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