I'm an American myself but I find European politics fascinating. Unfortunately I don't know German politics in quite as much depth as I do American or British politics, but I know enough to understand the basic positions and ideologies of each party as well as who is most likely to form coalitions with each other.
Kudos to you! I don't often meet Americans who care so much about Europe, let alone know so much about our politics!
As for who I like the best, its the FDP hands down. I'm an economic conservative and social liberal and the FDP's ideology matches well with mine. For the Greens I'd probably vote for them if I couldn't do FDP but I have major reservations about them (including their opposition to nuclear power). The CDU/CSU kind of reminds me of a moderate republican party which means they're OK on economics but kind of suck when it comes to social issues.
Their social conservatism is the main reason for my skepticism towards the CDU. To be fair, though, it has moved quite a lot into the center under Merkel. You even hear some CDU politicians advancing stances they would have ridiculed the Greens for only 15 years ago. Take for example CDU minister for families, 31 year old Schröder: She said "homosexuals in a marriage are living conservative values, because they take responsibility for each other".
When that's the new CDU, it may soon become electable for me. :mrgreen:
The SDs I'm not huge fans of and the SP kind of seems like a bad joke to me (seriously in 2005 they could have had a left-coalition of the SDP, the SP, and the Greens but the SP decides not to because of some bitter feelings between the ex-SDP members and those who stayed in the party? There really wasn't that great a difference in their programs from what I saw).
The problem was that the socialists (or Left Party, as they call themselves) only got that strong because of their fundamentalist opposition of Schröder's (SPD) reform of the unemployment support system. The Left Party's entire success was based on anti-SPD-populism -- their voters would have never bought it if they had allied immediately with the SPD of all parties.
And then, there is another problem: The Left Party's predecessor was the PDS, which was the successor of the former communist state party of the East Germany, the SED. And although they had reformed their party, thrown the hardliners out and generally embraced the democratic system, they still had the stigma of communist dictatorship, Berlin Wall killings and stalinism attached to them. Ironically, that didn't keep them from being successful in the East part of Germany, but resentment against them was (and still is) very strong in the West. So if the SPD had allied with them, it would have likely resulted in many West German supporters to turn away from the SPD in protest. The SPD didn't want to risk that (and only slowly try to make the voters accustomed to it, by first forming coalition with the Left Party on local and state level, until the outrage has worn off).
I do have a couple of questions, I heard about the North Rhine-Westphalia where the CDU kind of took a beating. First, did this cause the CDU/FDP to lose the Bundesrat or not?
Yes, it did. The CDU/FDP coalition will have no choice but appeasing at least the SPD when it comes to laws that require passing the Bundesrat. And this is the case no matter which coalition will be formed eventually in NRW (most likely are "grand coalition" of CDU and SPD, or a "spotlight coalition" of SPD, Greens and FDP. All other options are off the table).
Second, why do you think that result happened?
First, it was almost inevitable that it would happen, because the CDU/FDP's victory in 2005 was an exception. NRW is a structurally very left-leaning state (you got the old coal mining and heavy industry there, like in the US "rust belt"), and the state had been an SPD stronghold for almost 40 years. CDU and FDP could only score a victory in 2005, because the voters were extremely angry at the SPD/Green federal government. Without that anger, it would have been almost impossible for the CDU to win so many votes in NRW again.
So part of the CDU's losses were just "going back to normal". It's a left-leaning state, after all.
The second major reason was discontentment with the current CDU/FDP national government. That made the CDU's losses even worse. The national government has really been given a bad impression in the last 6 months: The coalition partners seemed to be more busy picking on each other, than on the opposition. The FDP clinged to the mantra of tax cuts, although nobody believed them anymore, nor was it popular anymore, because of the tensed budget situation -- and finally, the FDP skipped this one big promise. Then the FDP was blamed for advocacy of lobby groups. Then Merkel lacked leadership during the Greece and euro crisis, first took one stance, only to change it the next day.
Much like the midterm elections in the US, state elections in Germany often are used to slab at the incumbent national government. I think this was very much the case this time too.
Hope I could help!
