Germany’s governing Social Democrats took their second beating in a week in state elections Sunday, extending a string of setbacks for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, according to preliminary results.
The conservative Christian Democrats took about 51 percent of the vote in the eastern state of Thuringia, allowing them to end their alliance with the chancellor’s Social Democrats and govern alone, according to television forecasts based on early returns.
Even the Party of Democratic Socialism, which are the former East German communists, pulled ahead of the Social Democrats with 21 percent — up from 16 percent in the last election five years ago — to become the second-strongest party in a state for the first time since German unification in 1990.
The Social Democrats slumped to 18.5 percent, a loss of 11 percent..
Dietmar Bartsch, the party’s general manager, spoke of a “historic watershed” for the ex-communists, who have channeled eastern Germans’ anger about high joblessness and attacked Schroeder’s austerity plans.
The result means Thuringia’s four votes in the 69-seat federal upper house swing solidly to the opposition. That will make it even harder for Schroeder’s center-left coalition to pass legislation, including a three-year government austerity plan.
A year after his election, Schroeder’s popularity has slid to an all-time low– the result of bruising policy fights within the coalition, wavering between plans to cut Germany’s social safety net and unemployment stuck above 10 percent.
