On September 3, the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania held an election for the state parliament. Greens received 8.5% of the vote, more than double their showing the last time this state elected officers, in 2006. See this New York Times story.
I realize the percentage gain is larger, but I think it’s equally important that The Left gained 2% to 18%.
The percentage gain might be larger, but I don’t see the denominator in this equation, i.e., it could be that only about 10,000 people voted and greens got 850 votes, up from 425 past time in ’06. In order for this to maybe be significant, I would like to see how many people voted, who the candidates were, the paradigm in Germany with regards to “minor” parties, and what the green party of Germany espouses. Those are a lot of factors involved, and there are more that I didn’t mention.
The population of the state is 1,651,000, so I’m sure many more people voted than just 10,000.
Enterprising web surfers may check Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern_state_election,_2011
Links to all parties represented in the state parliament are found there.
#4 Thanks so much for the link, Scott. That really saved me a lot of internet research/fact-finding.
728,000 people voted (52% of the 1.4 million eligible). This means that about 56,500 votes went to the Greens in this election.
*modern* P.R. in [old West] Germany since 1949.
U.S.A. — in the ANTI-Democracy gerrymander Stone Age.
P.R.
The German Greens (1980s?) started out very much as a left-wing party with a focus on environmentalist concerns. Basically, the way that German electoral rules were set up creating a interest group to address these issues was pretty much pointless, but a new party could actually make a difference.
The party has grown up a bit. Still very feminist-civil liberties-liberal and pro-environmentalist policies, but they have been able to run mature, effective campaigns and compromise to get stuff done.
Some of the Green Party ads for the European Parliament have been very well done.