Posted on 09/18/2005 11:10:07 AM PDT by HHKrepublican
Germany's centre-right Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel, have failed to win a governing majority in Sunday's election, exit polls suggest.
They indicate that the Christian Democrats will be the largest party in what is likely to be a hung parliament.
Ms Merkel - who wants to introduce far-reaching reforms to revive a flagging economy - said she had a "clear mandate" to govern.
But she could be forced into a grand coalition with the Social Democrats.
Germany's ARD television puts with Christian Democrats in the lead with 36% of the vote - much worse than expected.
Their preferred coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democrats, did well with 10%, according to unofficial exit polls - but apparently not enough to secure a joint majority.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Nothing drastic but attempts to move forward -- or at lease not slide backwards.
hope so too.
if not, I predict she's going to have a really terrible job trying to get any of her policies pushed with the social dems obstructing on every issue.
I wonder if this ARD is Germany's eqivalent of CBS?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
CD got the most votes, but lost!
That's all BBC wants you to take away from this article.
But now they're projections, not polls...
With her conservatives the top vote-getters, Merkel, who grew up in the ex-communist east, seems likely to replace Schroeder, who has ruled Germany for seven years, to become Germany's first female chancellor.Yahoo! news
But the results will be a huge disappointment for her and the CDU. Without enough support to govern with the FDP, she will most likely be forced to share power with Schroeder's SPD in Germany's first "grand coalition" since the 1960s.
It is a grouping markets fear would doom her plans to push through aggressive reforms of Germany's labor market and tax system, but one which up to a third of Germans say they favor.
"We had hoped for a better result," Merkel said, conceding her preferred alliance of CDU/CSU and FDP did not appear to have a majority. "It is our duty to form a stable government."
A provisional official result was not likely to be published until after midnight local time (2200 GMT), although German television stations were progressively updating projections of the outcome.
In the immortal words of Richard Nixon, who will be left over there to push around any more?
Socialist Madonna of the Scottish Manor Born, I guess.
Leni

Who cares about exit polls! Only the real results matter!
You forgot one socialist (more of an kleptocrat though)...Paul Martin (Canada), but he might lose!
Patriotism and Economic Ideology = Apples and Oranges.
Wasn't the NAZY party also the SOCIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY? No wonder the DNC loves them so!
NAZY = NAZI (for the fr spelling nazis here)
>Wasn't the NAZY party also the SOCIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY? <
No, totally wrong. Try doing some serious reading.
The smart thing would be to let Schroeder lead. Making a deal with the devil seldom works.
National Socialist Party is the correct translation, I believe.
I was about to post the same thing, but was waiting for a German to put that disaster in writing.
I would refuse to have anything to do with Schroeder's party.
Let them sink further into Hell all by themselves.
The Nazi Party's full name was National Socialist German Worker's Party. In German, it was roughly Nationale Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. The abbreviation was NSDAP. The nickname Nazi came from the first two words of the official name. You'll notice that socialist was there but Democratic wasn't.
The idea of an exit poll doesn't compute. If the ballot is secret, why should a voter exiting the polling place tell the news media who he or she voted for?????
The idea of an exit poll doesn't compute. If the ballot is secret, why should a voter exiting the polling place tell the news media who he or she voted for?????
THAT's where my poor brain merged the two! I kept reading about the Social Democrat PArty and the next part I read was something about Hitler adding in the "Nationalist" into the title - but further reading stated he hated socialists especially anything liberally sexual in nature which I assume from that statement the two went hand in hand (no pun intended).
I also read in there somewhere the SOcial Democrat Party being the Capitalist Fascists - but that could have also been the web site I read it from.
That's ok - Hitler and Nazi Germany have no real interest to me except we lost about 1/3 of our entire family to Hitler's troops in the Serbia - Jugoslavia area in WWII - my family was hiding American air crews and helping them escape.
How many clinton and gen clark murdered I still don't know.
"During his seven-year stint, Germany's jobless total has risen above five million, and remains at more than 11%, she said."
If the CDU cannot form a governing coalition with their fellow conservatives, it might be better to sit things out entirely, and let the Social Democrats, greens, and other lefties run the country for another few years or so. By then, things will be bad enough for CDU victory and they can really straighten things out.
It's the BBC, after all. Tony Blair doesn't trust the BBC.
Thank you - for their courage and their sacrifices in the face of true "Nazi" horrors.
National Socialist German Workers Party!
What about the party from Bavaria? Is this the Free
Democrats/
the CSU is the Bavarian party. it is the equivalent of the CDU.
Heck with it - I can't keep track of all the socialist / democrat/ etc etc parties - the communist say they are democratic by their definition - you can't have socialism or communism without democracy - which is true ...
So WHY does the RNC ALWAYS use the word democracy when describing the USA?
Think about that!
Long weeks of negotiations await... I am well-informed about the German political panorama and I have no idea which government will emerge.
Because we were using that word and that political system for a hundred years before communism or Socialism even existed.
Think about that.
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