Almost a third of the voters remain undecided days before the election as Germany’s coalition dynamics reach fever pitch

The Länder election that took place in Bavaria, Germany´s second biggest state, last Sunday added flavour to what was previously a dull election campaign on federal level. According to Allensbach Institute, the share of people talking with others about the election rose from 29% to 49% recently. While the Christian Social Union (CSU) – sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – came out on top, chancellor Angela Merkel´s coalition partners the Free Democratic Party (FDP), who had also been part of the governing coalition in Bavaria, received only 3.3% of the votes, thus clearly failing to get over the 5% threshold that dictates whether a party can enter parliament. The liberals now fear they could miss entering the federal parliament next Sunday too. This would make Merkel´s “dream coalition” history. The liberals immediately started to aggressively beg for conservative voters to step in and help them. If successful, this strategy would take voters from the CDU/CSU. Indeed, at the Länder election in Lower-Saxony in January, “pity votes” for the FDP prevented a victory for the CDU.

Only 8.6% of Bavarians voted for the Greens on Sunday, which is in line with the negative trend in the polls on the federal level that is lowering the prospects for a Red-Green coalition government. Even the “Free Voters of Bavaria” superseded the Greens – a local organised party with a strong base in Bavaria which plays no role on federal level. It will be interesting to see where the votes for the Free Voters move to next Sunday.

Which brings us to the eurosceptic “Alternative für Deutschland”: the AfD gets between 3 and 4% in most polls, but pollsters say many of its potential voters hide their real intentions. If the AfD really enters the parliament, the continuation of the Black-Yellow coalition is hardly possible. Will Merkel really withstand the temptation to form a coalition with FDP and AfD? In any case, the AfD will give the eurosceptics inside CDU/CSU additional arguments to stay on track with the rescue measures, which may be a big disappointment for those across Europe who hope for the loosening of austerity. Even if the AfD fails to enter the Bundestag, the party will be established after this election. It will most likely enter the European parliament next year and continue to influence the European policy of Germany.  

In short: it´s complicated. Things are increasingly volatile and unforeseeable in the German six-to-seven-party system. Even only a couple of days before the election, about a third of voters are still undecided.

The social democrats have gained slight momentum in the last few weeks after Steinbrück did well in the TV-debate with Merkel. In Bavaria, the SPD gained 2-percentage-points – no tailwind, but better than expected. On federal level, polling average moved up to 26%. For the SPD it will be important to push up voter turnout, since a lot of former social democratic voters stayed at home during the elections four years ago. This is why the SPD is setting so much hope on its door-to-door-campaign, Obama-style, which is unprecedented in Germany´s campaign history. The official goal set out by the party headquarter is to knock on 5 million doors until September 22nd.

Will this endeavour actually have an effect on voter turnout and influence the election outcome? It is too early to tell, of course. Three days before the elections, all we have is subjective evidence. Here are some personal impressions from the ground.

During the last two weeks, I’ve helped canvass in the cities of Erfurt and Weimar in the East German state of Thuringia. Just to be clear: the differences between the Obama-model and the SPD-door-to-door-campaign could not be bigger. For example, we do not have any information about voting habits, family status or shopping preferences of individuals whatsoever. This has to do with German privacy laws as well as lack of money to buy such information on the market; the SPD will spend 23 million Euro on its election campaign, the American Democrats spent more than a billion in 2012 dollar.

With our limited resources, what we did was identify the voting districts where voter turnout had been low in the past election and where the SPD came off comparatively well. Those two features apply mainly in the slab buildings (“Plattenbauten”) constructed during communist times. This is an advantage, because the distance between doors is small. While the slab buildings where the best housing the GDR had to offer, today mostly elderly live here, as well as people who cannot effort a flat anywhere else. In other words, these are areas where the traditional social democratic supporter is to be found. In his famous speech in Dresden 2009, party chairman Sigmar Gabriel said: “We must go out into life: where it is loud, where it seethes, where it smells sometimes, and occasionally stinks. We must go where it is exhausting. Because only there, where it is exhausting, is there life.” Well, here we come.

We have a team of 30 young volunteers who have been door-to-door-campaigning five days the week for the past seven weeks; a lot of them are young socialists. The first insight for me when I joined the group was how motivated they are and how diligently they work for their beliefs. Four hours of door-to-door-campaigning per day is strenuous, both physically and mentally. One of the volunteers was chased by some neo-nazis out of the buildings. He showed up the next day as if nothing had happened. It is just great to work with these guys.

We always go in teams of two. About 30 to 50 % of the people where we ring the bell open the door. Most of them react positively, even though not enthusiastically. The atmosphere towards the SPD is definitely better than during the campaign four years ago, when the SPD had been a governing party for 11 years. Most people say they have not made a decision who they will vote for. If we ask what political issues they care about, a big share of people cannot think of one right away. Others name mostly social issues such as minimum wage, health care, childcare or pensions – all of which are core social democratic campaign issues. But also, many people still criticise the social reforms of 2003 (“Hartz IV”) and the increasing of the pension age to 67. “Mega” issues like the conflict in Syria or the European crisis are hardly ever mentioned.

At the beginning of the campaign, some people we spoke to complained about the gaffes of SPD-frontrunner Peer Steinbrück. However since he won the television debate against Angela Merkel in front of 18 million spectators, he is perceived much better. Not even his famous finger in the SZ-magazine seemed to have a negative impact. Quite the contrary, a lot of people say they will vote for Steinbrück because they find the media does not treat him right.

So, we have a great team, the voters we target are open minded, we have the right issues on offer, the candidate is better received than we expected, and until September 22nd we will have knocked on 40, 000 doors, which is every fourth household in the constituency. The other parties are not making half the efforts. It sounds like the clear path to victory, doesn’t it?

As you can see, we, the people in the field, are in campaign mood and have blinders on, just the way it should be. Our only enemy is the federal trend. In the German voting system, a 5-percentage-point difference between the national result and the result of the local candidate is about the maximum one can reach.

This brings me back to the elections in Bavaria. The SPD had the highest competency scores in core areas such as social justice (SPD 42%, CSU 29%), fair wages (44% to 28%) and when it comes to the “worries of the ordinary people” (38% to 22%). Still, social democrats received less than half of the votes of the CSU. After the election next Sunday, social democrats will have to take off the blinders and seriously discuss why we are not more successful in transferring these attributes into more votes.

Michael Miebach is a political scientist and senior editor of the Berliner Republik, a leading German political journal. He is also deputy chairman of the progressive think tank Das Progressive Zentrum.

A contribution to State of the Left – Policy Network’s monthly insight bulletin that reports from across the world of social democratic politics