Word: voting
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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...
...Meanwhile, there was a strong showing from some of the country's smaller parties. The Green Party won 12% of the vote, and the Left Party, successor to East Germany's Communist Party, took 7.5% of the vote. But the real winner was the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), which won its best-ever result in a European election, with 11% of the vote. The FDP, under its outspoken leader Guido Westerwelle, is Merkel's preferred coalition partner. Their combined results leave Merkel's Conservatives and the FDP just short of the 50% they would need in September should...
...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...
...most spectacular result was in the U.K., where beleaguered Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party scraped a mere 15.7% of the national vote. It limped into third place behind the Conservative Party, with 28.5%, and the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) - campaigning to pull Britain out of the E.U. - which mustered 17.4% of the vote. (See pictures of Brown...