An Election in the Shadow of the Crisis
In past Bundestag elections, excitement arose primarily from exceptional situations (as, for instance, in the case of the first all-German elections), from a crisis-like intensification of the economic or political situation, from a duel of personalities with an open-ended outcome, and from the population’s fear of infringements upon their material interests and security guarantees. There were also electoral campaigns in which social blueprints were passionately contested, but that’s already more than thirty years in the past and thus ancient history for today’s young voters.
To discover what is shaping the 2009 campaign we must first look to the economic and financial market crisis. As late as the spring, it seemed as though this election would occur in the shadow of the crisis. Now, too, in the view of the majority, the election is chiefly about our chances of pulling out of the crisis as quickly as possible. Only with the intensification of the crisis did a Black-Yellow majority emerge in the polls at the beginning of the year. Over the last few weeks, two-thirds of the population have discussed the crisis, more so than any other topic. And yet, crisis-related fears are having less of an impact on the starting point of the election campaign. The economic pessimism of the population has eased dramatically over the last few weeks. Whereas 55% of citizens were still expecting unfavorable economic developments in May, that number now stands at only 30%.
At Most a New Coalition Partner
Unlike in 2005, fears that a certain political coalition could threaten one’s own interests barely played a role in this election. To be sure, the vast majority of voters expect little good to come of the next legislative session, given the high level of national debt; however, the “threat potential” is not exclusively assigned to one party, as was the case in 2005, when nearly 40% of voters feared that they would suffer personal disadvantages from a government takeover by the CDU/CSU.
The prospect of a possible change in government isn’t providing much tension this time around either. Two-thirds of the population expect Angela Merkel to remain chancellor; just under half see her as the head of a Black-Yellow coalition in the coming legislative session, 16 percent see her as the chancellor of another Grand Coalition. Accordingly, the vast majority expects at most a new coalition partner. This prospect creates excitement only within one electoral group, which is mobilizing to a very unusual extent, namely supporters of the FDP.
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The “Pleasure in the Battle of Opinions”
To be sure, even after four years of the Grand Coalition, citizens associate the CDU/CSU and the SPD with radically different political goals and programs. But at least since the Red-Green coalition made its decisions on Agenda 2010, citizens realize that there is, and must be, a significant divergence between programmatic goals and decisions made within the context of governing. Leftist parties, which have a stronger ideological identity, are usually damaged more severely by this than the pragmatic bourgeois parties.
However, it is not only the cooperation within the Grand Coalition that is making it nearly impossible to kick off pointed, polarizing debates. Not only politics is pragmatic and sober, the larger society is as well. Polarizing debates have become foreign to the population; if it witnesses such debates, it tends to consume them as a specific form of entertainment, without being affected by them in a lasting and profound way. The “pleasure in the battle of opinions,“ which media scholar Emil Dovifat identified as an essential German characteristic, has become less pronounced, especially when it comes to fundamental ideological debates.
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