Election statistics - The German extreme right

Germany‘s general election on Sunday was a defeat for Chancellor Helmut Kohl, marking the end of his 16 years‘ premiership of Europe‘s most powerful state.

The ballot was also a big setback for Germany‘s still-fragmented fascists who signally failed to cross the 5% barrier required for entry to the German federal parliament, the Bundestag. Despite forecasts in numerous opinion polls and surveys of a breakthrough for the three main contending fascist parties - the Republikaner (REP), the Deutche Voksunion (DVU) and the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) - the predicted successes did not materialise. Searchlight did not make such forecasts and its analysis has been vindicated.

The combined score of the six ultra-right and fascist parties at the federal level was 4.6% of the total vote. The failure of the combined score to surmount the 5% hurdle can be partly attributed to divisions and feuds between the
parties and to tactical voting to remove Kohl. The divisions  prevented them from  mounting a united election campaign and  precluded their presence on the ballot papers in all voting districts in seventeen German states.

In western Germany, the fascists obtained abysmal results but in eastern Germany the outcome was different and, given the long-term strategy of the NPD in particular, gives grounds for continuing concern.
    Though the DVU, led by multi-millionaire Dr. Gerhard Frey from his Munich bunker, was not able to emulate its regional campaign in the eastern region of Saxony-Anhalt where, in April this year, it scooped up 13.6% of the vote, it managed to win 2.7% of the vote in the eastern region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where regional elections also took place on Sunday.

Early analysis suggests that the DVU was able to gather 4% of the vote in the rural areas of this region and around 4.6% in those towns in the region that have been blighted by mass unemployment. The jobless toll in former East Germany is well over 20%.
    In this same region, the nazi NPD also took  1% of the vote, despite the fact that one of its key candidates, in the Baltic coastal town of Stralsund, Dr.  Manfred Roeder, was a convicted terrorist killer. Roeder is a close associate of the British nazi BNP.

The total votes obtained  (2,280,000)  rather than raw percentages will give a clearer indication of the extent of electoral support for the fascists‘ anti-foreigner and “defence of the Deutsche Mark” policies.
There is every reason to exercise caution: two weeks ago, ultra-right parties scored almost 700,000 votes in Bavaria despite the fact that their percentages of the vote were low.

In Germany as a whole, an ominous signal was the fact that an estimated 5% of young and first-time voters voted for the DVU. Thus, though the results were a definite defeat for the fascists, there is evidence of support that can lay the foundations for future expansion.
    DVU leader Frey will undoubtedly be disappointed that his personal investment of more than #750,000 in a propaganda blitz in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania failed to deliver seats in the regional or national parliaments but the NPD will not have been disappointed. Its 1% in the region was more than it hoped for and, unlike the DVU, it has a well-organised organisation on the ground there.

The NPD used the campaigns in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg as a laboratory and dry run for its intervention in next year‘s regional ballot in Saxony where it has a numerically stronger organisation than the Greens who might be the Social-Democrat leader Gerhard Schröder‘s coalition partners in the incoming German government.
    The NPD will concentrate its future activities on campaigns among young people and against unemployment as well as promoting its virulent racism and antisemitism. It has indicated that it believes that it will profit more than any other party from any future failures to tackle unemployment in eastern Germany, where Kohl‘s CDU lost more than 10% of Sunday‘s vote  as a result of broken promises of economic regeneration.
The NPD‘s strategy is to prepare at the grass roots - it held meetings in more than 50 cities, towns and villages in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg alone during this campaign  - in small communities and to wait for failures by the new government.

The DVU, with a tiny membership in these regions and having had illusions of success will find yesterday‘s setback harder to cope with and recover from. It may seek “unity” talks with the NPD and REP or it might cut its losses and retreat. Unity between the REP which has the professionalism, the DVU which has the funds and the NPD which has the grassroots activists could spell serious danger in the future.
The coming months will see a restructuring of the fascist organisations with the NPD emerging as the best-organised contender for building on the burning discontents of large swathes of the German electorate.
 

FEDERAL TOTALS
Bund freier Bürger (BfB)                                                             121,220           0.2%
Deutsche Volksunion (DVU)                                                     600,194           1.2%
Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)                    126,148           0.3%
Ökologische Demokratische Partei (DP)                                      97,709            0.2%
Pro DM                                                                                     429,468           0.9%
Republikaner (REP)                                                                    905,200           1.8%
TOTALS                                                                                  2,280,219          4.6%

SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN
REP 0.4%
DVU 1.3%
NPD 0.2%

HAMBURG
REP 0.6%
DVU 2.1%
NPD 0.1%

LOWER SAXONY
REP 0.9%
DVU 0.6%
NPD 0.1%

BAVARIA
REP 2.6%
DVU 0.6%
NPD 0.1%

BREMEN
REP 0.6%
DVU 1.6%
NPD 0.2%

NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA
REP 1.05
DVU 0.9%
NPD 0.1%

HESSE
REP 2.3%
DVU 1.0%
NPD 0.2%

RHINELAND-PALATINATE
REP 2.1%
DVU 0.7%
NPD 0.2%

BADEN-WÜRTTEMBURG
REP 4.0%
DVU 0.6%
NPD 0.1%

SAARLAND
REP 1.2%
DVU 0.9%
NPD 0.3%

BERLIN
REP 2.4%
DVU 2.1%
NPD 0.4%

MECKLENBURG-WESTERN POMERANIA
REP 0.6%
DVU 2.7%
NPD 1.0%
 

BRANDENBURG
REP 1.7%
DVU 2.7%
NPD 0.8%
 

SAXONY-ANHALT
REP 0.6%
DVU 3.2%
NPD 0.3%

THURINGIA
REP 1.6%
DVU 2.9%
NPD Did not stand

SAXONY
REP 1.9%
DVU 2.6%
NPD 1.2%