Angela Merkel triumphs in German election to secure historic third term

Chancellor's Christian Democratic Union and sister party win 41.5% of the vote just five seats short of overall majority
Philip Oltermann and Kate Connolly in Berlin theguardian.com, Monday 23 September 2013 04.46 EDT

Angela Merkel is basking in a historic third-term victory in the German elections, having led her conservatives to their best result in more than 20 years. German editorials on Monday praised her considerable achievement. The Sddeutsche Zeitung columnist Heribert Prantl lamented the lack of a feminine form of "triumphator" in German, because Merkel would deserve it. "Her election victory was not just a victory, but a triumph. It is her triumph, not that of her party." Like Prantl, Spiegel Online says Germany is reliving the era of its first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer; the conservatives are "the one party that makes all the calls at national level and will practically fill all the key posts from within its own ranks. The other parties can just look on." Die Tageszeitung says the red-green opposition movement is practically dead: "They also lost in 2005 and 2009. There's no indication that that will change. If there will be a red-green government in the future, it will only be with involvement of the Left party." But there are also critical voices. Die Welt asks whether Merkel will finally start pursuing reforms at home as well as abroad: "She won't be able to dine out on [Gerhard] Schrder's legacy for another four years". Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and its sister party, the Christian Social Union, won 41.5% of the vote, with analysts calling the win a personal victory for the 59-year-old. Merkel is on track to overtake Margaret Thatcher asEurope's longest-serving female leader. Merkel's performance was compared to that of Adenauer, who was the last chancellor to secure a Bundestag majority without need of a coalition partner, in 1957. After a campaign that concentrated almost solely on Merkel's personality and solid leadership in times of economic turmoil, but was thin on detailed policy, she came within a whisker of obtaining an absolute majority, falling just five seats short. Final results gave the CDU/CSU 311 seats, the Social Democratic party (SPD) 192, the Left party 64 and the Greens 63. The historical dimensions of the election were clear, with Merkel set to become just the third postwar chancellor to secure three election wins, after Adenauer and Helmut Kohl, who brought her into the party as an inexperienced and gauche 35-year-old. She has also bucked the European trend by becoming the only leader in the eurozone, from left or right, to be re-elected since the snowballing of theeurozone crisis in 2010. Out of 17 countries,, 12 governments have fallen, indicating how protected Germans feel from the crisis under Merkel's leadership. In a result that was closely watched across Europe, Merkel crushed her opponents and, indeed, some of her allies. Her coalition partner, the FDP, fell out of parliament for the first time since it was formed after the second world war, securing just 4.8% of the vote. All other parties with the notable exception of the eurosceptic Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) lost ground. The French president, Franois Hollande, was the first world leader to offer his congratulations, but the wider implications for Europe, austerity, the euro crisis and David Cameron's hopes of repatriating powers from Brussels were less clear.

Merkel will still have to rely on a coalition partner for a secure governing majority. Without her former liberal allies, she might have to turn to the SPD, which is firmly opposed to Cameron's ideas of wresting powers back from theEuropean Union. Merkel, daughter of a scientist and pastor who grew up in communist East Germany, appeared to her party faithful in Berlin just 45 minutes after the first exit polls were released on Sunday night a clear indication of her confidence in the victory. "We can surely celebrate this evening," she said, beaming at the largely young crowds who chanted 'Angie, Angie'. "This is a super result," she told them. After thanking her campaign team in a rare emotional address, she turned to her husband, the chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, who was standing among the crowd, and said: "And of course my husband, standing on the sidelines, who has had to put up with quite a lot." Sauer smiled shyly back at her. Merkel's official biographer, Stefan Kornelius, told the Guardian: "This usually distant and unemotional woman is grinning and cheering all evening. Finally she gets the reward she was denied for two consecutive elections. "But she knows the traps. Certainly her party is that close to an overall majority the first time since Adenauer in 1957. But waking up tomorrow morning with all votes counted she might need to find a coalition partner anyway." While Merkel's CDU celebrated its historic victory, the centre-right Free Democrats were contemplating the worst result in their 75-year history after failing to reach the 5% threshold necessary to enter parliament. The radical Left party (8.6%) was celebrating what appeared to be its new position as the third biggest force in the Bundestag. The other remarkable breakthrough of the evening was the sudden emergence of the eurosceptic AfD as a force. The party was just 0.3% short of the necessary threshold to secure Bundestag representation for the first time. It had promised that if it did so, it would change the terms of the euro crisis debate in which Germany has repeatedly sanctioned bailouts for countries in fiscal difficulties. "We have to rethink the euro crisis," said Frauke Petry, an AfD leader. "We have to allow weaker countries like Greece and Spain and Portugal to leave the euro and rebuild their economies and then maybe return. We don't think we should pay for debts that have been accumulated by these countries. We think we will be able to push CDU and SPD towards new positions. Many members of the CDU quite agree with us but haven't said so in public." Despite the record victory, Merkel may struggle in her third term. She could yet be forced into a coalition, most likely with the SPD, who, with 25.7%, secured the second worst result in their history; or even the Green party (8.4%), with whom the CDU has entered government on a state level. Otherwise she could find herself struggling to push legislation through both chambers of parliament, with the upper house dominated by left-leaning parties. While the euro crisis played a minimal role in the election campaign, it is likely to take on a prominent role now that Merkel, praised and criticised in equal measure for her handling of it, has been endorsed for a third four-year term. Wolfgang Schuble, the finance minister and a close Merkel ally, said the conservatives' win should reassure Europeans. "Europe doesn't need to worry about the German elections," he said. "We will remain reliable in the role of stabilit y anchor and the growth motor of Europe Germany continues to have an important leadership responsibility."

Germany: the Age of Merkel

Angela Merkel has not so much clung on to power in Germany, as she did in 2009, as hugely increased her grip on it
Editorial The Guardian, Sunday 22 September 2013 18.04 EDT

Keep tight hold of "Mutti". That was the message from German voters on Sunday as Angela Merkel the nation's "Mummy" to her image makers secured a stunning personal triumph at the polls that consolidates her unchallenged claim to be the dominant political leader in modern economic-crisis-riven Europe. Since the financial crisis struck the global economy in 2008, European voters have thrown out incumbent government after incumbent government, whether of the left, the centre or the right. But Mrs Merkel and her CDU/CSU centre-right party have bucked the anti-incumbency trend not once but twice. Mrs Merkel was first elected in 2005, forming a coalition with the ousted centre-left SPD. In 2009, she hung on to power even though the CDU/CSU vote had dipped, forming a coalition with the resurgent liberal FDP. Now, four years later, she has not so much hung on to power, as she did in 2009, as hugely increased her grip on it. Whatever the final share of the vote and seats, this election has been a massive endorsement for Mrs Merkel. The exit polls will doubtless move around a little before the final tallies of vote share and Bundestag seats are settled, and coalition options, if any, can be definitively considered. But with that important proviso, this is about as dominant a result as Mrs Merkel could have dreamed of, far better than the opinion polls were suggesting even at the end of last week. Her party seems likely to end up with 42%-43%, an increase of 10 points on four years ago, and the centre-right's best result since Helmut Kohl triumphed in the first post-reunification election in 1990. If, as seemed possible on Sunday night, only four parties win representation in the new Bundestag by topping the 5% threshold, Mrs Merkel may even have secured an overall majority, enabling the CDU/CSU to govern alone, not in coalition, for the first time since Konrad Adenauer in 1957. Bear in mind, at the same time, that Mrs Merkel's personal popularity runs far ahead of that of her party, and it becomes clear that we are witnessing a rare moment of indubitable political ascendancy in a continent where weak governments are the norm, not least in Britain. The centre-left Social Democrats may come out of this election as a junior coalition partner in a left-right "grand coalition" with Mrs Merkel. That would be a welcome move. They also slightly

raised their share of the vote from the lamentable 23% of 2009 to 25%-26% this time. In every other respect, however, the SPD has little to celebrate. It is clear that the party's problems go deeper than just the gaffe-prone chancellor candidacy of Peer Steinbrck. The SPD's programme of increased taxes on the wealthy and the middle classes failed to capture the mood of modern Germany. There will, and should, undoubtedly be a profound period of reflection on the German centre-left about the party's failure to win much more than a quarter of the electorate. The resilience of the Green vote and that of the Left party, though both lost support while the SPD gained a little, will surely lead to speculation about realignment. All this should be watched very attentively by centre-left politicians in this country, who face many of the same problems. The big loser in 2013 is the liberal FDP, which was on course on Sunday night to fail to cross the 5% threshold for the first time in 60 years, after winning nearly 15% four years ago. That failure is surely a verdict on the FDP's free-market programme, something that Mrs Merkel has scrupulously resisted in her own, nominally more rightwing party. It also seems clear that the growing fragmentation of party loyalties in German politics in which the anti-eurozone-bailout AfD (Alternative fr Deutschland) looked like falling just short of the threshold too has damaged the FDP as well. The net result, though, is unmistakable. Germans have given Mrs Merkel a strong mandate to govern Germany. But the way she uses her new power will affect not just Germany, important though that is, but the whole of Europe and that includes us here in Britain. This is the Age of Merkel.