Michael Pollak wrote:
>Because the SPD and the Greens refuse to ally with the Left party.
-Fucking sectarians. -Doug
Although there's a reasonable argument that the total vote of the left-oriented parties is only this large because of this sectarianism. If the Left Party and the SPD were seen as able to be in alliance, the SPD probably would have lost some of its votes to the CDU and the Left Party would have lost some of its votes to the very far right.
Instead, the Left Party was able to position itself as a completely outsider party unacceptable to the establishment, able to attracted disaffected votes from a broader range. Remember, the Left Party has also said it won't join an SPD alliance-- the sectarianism goes both ways.
And the SPD probably received some votes from moderates wanted to deny the CDU complete dominance of government and anticipated forcing a "grand coalition," moderate votes based on assuming the impossibility of a left party.
In a machiavellian sense, sectarianism on the left was the strategy that defeated a complete rightwing takeover of Germany at the moment. Possibly a more straightup movement of the SPD to the left could have pulled it out, but that would have had to have happened a few years ago. At this point, I don't think Schoeder had the credibility to keep everyone pissed off in his camp no matter what he said.
Nathan