Although Berlin is only 2/5 "east", in the eastern boroughs as a whole, it won almost 40% of the vote. In Hohenschoenhausen it got over 45% of the vote.
Even in the central borough, Mitte, where demographic changes after the fall of the wall might have caused its vote to fall, the PDS increased from over 40% to over 42%.
These are absolutely massive figures in a system of proportional representation. Not only is there no evidence of substantial demographic change ten years after the fall of the Wall, but the easterners are clearly voting in a block against western "colonialisation".
It is true that the PDS is a very different party to that of its forebear, the SED, and much self criticism has been done, but the picture is the same as in most countries of eastern Europe: that the former Communist Party has reformed and is still an electoral force to be reckoned with at least in left social democratic terms. The overall message is that there were certainly things wrong with eastern state centralised socialism, but it was not all wrong. There is much to remain proud of.
The PDS success in East Berlin is one of the strongest performances of this type.
Certainly there are elements of protest votes (though not so much under the German PR system). Certainly the profile of electoral support is unusual, with a high proportion of the eastern intelligentsia voting for the PDS as well as the poorest of the workers. But its position with the intelligentsia is more important than that. The PDS has made a successful change to a type of bourgeois electoral politics, that are social democratic but with a critical *alternativ* edge. It repeatedly gets the message across often in the form of jokes, that it does not accept the limits of bourgeois electoral politics.
In west Berlin the picture is completely different with the CDU the hegemonic party, but there are still signs of the PDS making progress as a party to the left of the SPD.
In Charlottenburg its vote rose to over 4%, as it did in west Berlin on average. In Schoeneberg it rose to over the 5% hurdle that is significant for any party in German politics. (This must be the PDS objective in Germany as a whole). In the unusual district of Kreuzberg, tucked in a corner surrounded by the old Wall, and long full of Turkish workers and casual *alternativ* students or former students, its vote went up markedly from over 5% to over 9%, while that of the Greens slipped below 30%.
Overall the Greens declined badly as a protest party in the Berlin elections, down 3.5% to under 10%. The FDP gained no protest votes from the existence of the Red Green national government and slipped a further one percent to below 3%. This looks very ominous for its chances of continuing to be a player at all in national politics. Johannes has argued that that constrains the prospects of the CDU in getting allies.
The CDU gained 3% overall with over 40% in Berlin as a whole while the SPD lost only a bit over 1% to get 22% of the city vote overall. German elections do not seem to analyse "swing" but are able to calculate figures after the elections of the total number of votes that seemed to shift between parties, but the "swing" from the SPD to the CDU in Berlin was much less than might have been expected from the other recent elections. Perhaps Berliners welcome the city's restoration as the capital.
One other detail, the right wing Republikaner Party slipped another percent to below 3%. Probably a continuing indication of the lurking risk of right wing attacks, but not of a major electoral advance for fascism, despite the recent adjustment of the naturalisation laws.
So overall the picture is a strengthening of division of two Berlins, the west dominated by the CDU, the east dominated by the PDS, while the PDS has made inroads in the west.
10 years after the fall of the wall there is still a lot to play for, in terms of the meaning of social justice, if not of socialism, in the united Germany.
Chris Burford
London