The demographic and occupational groups that support the CDU and the SPD in the East differ from those that support them in the West; this has to do with that fact that historical-political loyalties were largely extinguished during forty years of SED rule. For example, the CDU was able to attract a majority of the workers and even the unemployed in many elections in the East. The SPD, which once did this successfully in West Germany, is barely able to reach these voters in – of all places – Saxony and Thuringia, the central German regions in which the party originated. One thing that proved highly disadvantageous for the SPD was that it was the only party that had to make a completely fresh start in East Germany in 1990. By contrast, all its competitors could fall back on organizational structures, personnel, and membership files.
Essentially, the CDU turned out to be the party of the common people in the new states. An especially impressive demonstration of this came in the Landtag elections in Saxony in 1999. While the party had suffered painful losses among workers during the Bundestag elections in Saxony only a year earlier, it managed to find broad resonance within this occupational group once again, attracting 58 percent of the vote. And even 40 percent of the unemployed who went to the polls in 1999 cast their ballots for the CDU. At that time, 66 percent of voters with low educational levels (junior high/secondary school or no diploma) voted for the CDU. To be sure, in the 2004 Landtag elections, the CDU suffered losses across all occupational strata in Saxony, though these losses were especially pronounced among apprentices (minus 24 percent), workers (minus 15 percent), and the unemployed (minus 17 percent). On the whole, however, it has remained (among other things) the party of the common people.
The SPD, with an exceedingly low level [of support] among all gainfully employed individuals in Saxony, was down to a mere 5 percent of workers’ votes (minus 5 percent) and down to merely 8 percent among the unemployed (minus 1 percent). All in all, the Social Democratic Party polled a mere 9.8 percent in Saxony. Remarkably enough, the PDS also suffered losses among workers and the unemployed, achieving 18 percent and 28 percent, respectively (in each case 1 percent lower than in 1999); in spite of its massive campaign against the Hartz laws, it made significant gains only among pensioners, who are not affected by the new regulations. The starting point in the East is bad for the FDP (and also for the Greens, who have so far managed to return to an East German Landtag only in Saxony), because the East has no bourgeois-liberal milieu comparable to that in the West. However, during the Landtag elections in Saxony last year, the FDP was able for the first time to appeal to the self-employed in larger numbers: 12 percent of this occupational group (plus 9 percent) decided to vote for the FDP. Although 54 percent of the self-employed voted for the CDU, five years earlier it had still been 69 percent. However, 8 percent of this occupational group did cast their ballots for the NPD in September of 2004. Among occupational groups, the FDP received a great deal of support from apprentices, garnering 13 percent (plus 10 percent).
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