So what’s the main issue driving this? Recession? WOT? Boredom with Merkel? What?
All of ‘em. From what I know about German politics, Germans are overwhelmingly in favor of withdrawing from Aghanistan/WOT. The Communists are the only party clearly in favor of withdrawal. But I think the the strong resurgence is largely because of the economic crisis and boredom with the Social-Democrats (SPD) who are in disarray. The Commie voters are largely Social-Democrats who think the SPD is not leftist enough.
First of all, we are talking about three state level elections. Each of them has had their own dynamic.
In Saxony (Freistaat Sachsen) Merkel’s CDU won quite comfortably (41.2%) and will likely enter into a coalition with the FDP.
In Thuringia (Freistaat Thueringen) where the CDU almost 12% since the last state election the situation was special because the current CDU Minister-President, Dieter Althaus, has had some problems one of which being that he was involved in a skiing accident last winter and caused the death of a woman. Althaus himself had been in a coma after the accident for months. Unfortunately, after he was released from hospital, he handled the aftermath of the accident very poorly and he and the widower had some very public disagreements. Another factor is that The Left has always been very strong in Thuringia. One reason for that is that it is a former GDR state and it seems that a lot of people over there still want the “good old times” back and they believe that the state must fix everything and provide for rivers of milk and honey...(sarc)
In Saarland the situation was also quite unique since Oskar Lafontaine who is now head of The Left was actually SPD (the Social Democrats) Minister-President of this state for 14 years (1985-1998) and had also a short stint as federal finance minister after that. After clashes with his fellow cabinet members and also within the SPD some years back he resigned from office and the party and joined The Left. Lafontaine has always been rather popular in Saarland because he has this folksy “I will fight for the little people” thing going on and Saarland’s voters have always been more on the left side which is not much of a problem on a federal level since the Saarland has only a little over 1 million citizens. Lafontaine was certainly one of the key factors which caused The Left to get 21.3% of the vote (CDU: 34.5%).
I do not think that these state election results show any kind of federal trend because The Left does not perform as well on a federal level as they do in some states and the SPD is in complete disarray and weak (which does not mean that Merkel or the CDU can afford any kind of screwup before the election). It should also be noted that the actual “winner” of the three state elections was the FDP, the Free Democratic Party or “the Liberals” (liberal as in personal freedom, small government, low taxes). They gained a lot of support. And the FDP ist the party with which Merkel’s CDU wants to form the next federal government coalition. And Merkel is still very popular as Chancellor even with social democrats. Therefore, I am not worried - yet.
“So what’s the main issue driving this? Recession? WOT? Boredom with Merkel? What?”
Apparently they crave the gray, drab, futureless, oppressive, but predictable existence of a marxist society.