The PDS up 4.8% is now second at 21.4%.
I hope Johannes will comment on the results. I wonder if the experience of being jointly in opposition will make SPD members more open to alliance with the PDS and shift the left wing of social democracy a little more. This would be uninteresting except that the PDS represents a historical memory of a non-capitalist economic past that was not totally unsuccessful.
The FDP fell to 1.1% not helped by its president advising its supporters to vote CDU! Clearly all the protest votes against the Schroeder governments economy package are going to the CDU not the FDP, and it may never recover.
In local elections in North Rhine Westfalia traditionally SPD, the CDU again moved ahead of the SPD.
In certain local areas such as Cologne, the PDS got a toe hold by going up to 2% of the vote.
Gysi of the PDS was reported as saying that the results are consistent with the steady progress of the party. It is not clear to me from a distance whether this is really so, since it could be accounted for by protest votes. Nor is it clear whether the PDS is establishing pockets of supporters in the west, which could run a party organisation effectively.
In Brandenburg this week the SPD decided to govern in alliance with the CDU not the PDS. But it was openly debated and Regina Hildebrandt, the prominent minister for work, publically disassociated herself from the decision. Anti-communism seems to be on the retreat. In that Land, as in Berlin which also has a grand coalition of CDU-SPD, the PDS now has the advantage of being the main opposition party.
Is the SPD shaken by these results? It is possible Schroeder is calculating that economic unpopularity from cuts early in his term of office is worth bearing if in a couple of years time Germany has come out of its downturn, and he looks a sound guardian of the country's economy. Presumably he thinks he can ride out discontent within the party.
Chris Burford
London