Word: lowing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...night for the other big player in German politics, the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The Social Democrats are licking their wounds after suffering a humiliating election result, with the party's share of the vote sinking to a historic low of just 21%. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Foreign Minister and SPD member who's standing against Merkel in the federal election, summed up the dismal mood in his party when he said, "This is a disappointing election result - there's no talking around...
...Reflecting the miserable voter turnout across Europe, only 43% of Germans bothered to go to the polls. Social Democrats have been quick to point to the low turnout as a reason the European Parliament vote shouldn't be seen as a test for the upcoming federal elections. "I don't think you can reach any conclusions when the turnout for the European elections was so low," says Social Democrat MP Sebastian Edathy. "It's a different picture in the federal elections, when we normally have a bigger turnout of 70%-80%." Nevertheless, Edathy admits his party failed to reach...
...While there were many messages from the election that took place between June 4 and 7 - including the record low turnout and the rise of the fringe vote - the main one appeared to be a ringing rejection of the centre-left. Across the E.U.'s 27 member states, the story was the same regardless of who the incumbent national government was: voters were shifting rightwards, leaving many social-democrat parties hurting from historic defeats. (Read TIME's roundup on the European election from the U.K., Italy, France and Germany...
...center left was not the only loser in the elections. The Parliament itself saw its credibility suffer further as voter turnout fell to a record low of 43.1%, compared with 45.5% in 2004. (For the Parliament's first direct elections in 1979, turnout was a remarkable 61.99%). This came despite a gargantuan effort to fight apathy through poster campaigns, television ads and YouTube initiatives...
...low turnout also helped extremist, single-issue parties and oddball candidates seize seats. In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party, headed by anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders, came second to the ruling Christian Democrats with 17%, pushing the Labour Party into third place. Anti-Gypsy extremists in Hungary and Slovakia won seats. In Austria, two far-right parties earned 18%, while Finland's anti-immigrant True Finns won 10% of the vote. And Britain's UKIP, who won 13 of the 72 British seats despite having no members in the 646-member House of Commons, will be joined by two European...