Germany's electoral history: the dominance of Christian Democracy

A few hours before the next elections are held in Germany, polls show that the gap between the CDU-CSU (Christian Democrats) and the SPD (Social Democrats) is minimal. The upcoming elections will mark the end of Angela Merkel's legacy and could mean a change of party in the German Chancellery. Whatever happens, the CDU-CSU will remain the party that has won the most elections since 1949 and has held the chancellorship the longest. Looking at the election results in Germany since 1949, the dominance of Christian Democracy is clear, so if the Social Democrats win the election this Sunday, it will be an anomaly. Let's look at the election results in Germany since 1949:

Contrary to what one might think, since there has always been a coalition government in Germany (with the exception of a few months under Adenauer in the 1957-1961 legislature) and only once has one party won an absolute majority (the CDU-CSU in 1957), the dominance of Christian Democracy in Germany is clear. Of the 19 federal elections held since 1949, it has won 16 times, while the SPD has won 3 times (and twice by a very narrow margin). If we take into account the number of years since 1949 that each party has been in the chancellery, the CDU-CSU has been in the chancellery for a total of 51 years and the SPD for a total of 21 years. It is true that the German party system has never been a predominant party system because, as I said before, there have always been coalition governments and usually with the participation of the FDP (liberals), which has almost always been in government.

The graph shows the evolution of the German party system. Between 1949 and 1969 the CDU-CSU leader Konrad Adenauer was chancellor. During the 1950s it was seen as unlikely that the CDU-CSU would lose the chancellorship. The SPD still claimed to be Marxist and although it had a solid electorate (about a third), its Marxist stance prevented it from growing further, so that in 1959 in the Godesberg programme it formally abandoned Marxism and the class struggle. This allowed it to grow electorally until in 1969 it finally occupied the chancellorship with Willy Brandt in coalition with the Liberals. Something similar happened in Spain at the other ideological extreme, when Alianza Popular, which had a solid electorate but not enough to win elections (around 25%), was recast as the current Partido Popular.

In 1972, the SPD achieved its best result in history and held the Chancellorship until 1983 in favour of Helmut Kohl. It was in that year that Die Grünen (The Greens) entered the German parliament, and from then on the Liberals were no longer guaranteed third place, as the Greens gradually consolidated an electorate of between 5 and 10 per cent. Unlike the Liberals, the Greens did not enter government until 1998 in coalition with the Social Democrats. From 1994, German reunification led to the emergence of the PSD, the heir to the GDR's socialist party, which changed its name in 2007 to Die Linke (The Left) and placed itself to the left of the Social Democrats. The party tends to gain support similar to that of the Greens.

During the term of office of the current chancellor Angela Merkel, in office since 2005, there have been further changes in the party system. We see the SPD getting its worst results in history and the CDU-CSU, despite its recovery in 2013, getting one of its worst results in 2005, 2009 and 2017. We also see how the Liberals achieve their best result in 2009 only to disappear from parliament in 2013 and return in 2017. But this time it does not return as the third party, as a radical right-wing party (AfD) has emerged and takes third place, while the Greens and the radical left continue to maintain stable support.

As in many European countries, the German party system has changed in recent years. For 35 years it was a two-and-a-half party system and from the 1980s onwards it became a moderate multi-party system, with the entry of the Greens and the Left. For more than half a century, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats won at least 75 % of the vote, but this has changed in recent years. In the 2017 elections, coinciding with the entry of the radical right into parliament, they got "only" 53.5% of the vote, and for Sunday's elections they may fall short of 50% between them. The party system has changed and it may be that an SPD candidate will return to the chancellorship, but whatever the outcome, the dominance of Christian democracy in German elections will remain intact.