Kawasaki Takeshi

The purpose of this article is to analyze the German Federal election on September 27th 2009. Both Candidates for Chancellor, Merkel and Steinmeier, were belonging to the same government of the Grand Coalition, so that it was lacking in the controversial issues, and it came to the lightest turnout in the history of the Federal elections. The focal points of this article are about so-called "Uberhangsmandat", the additional seats, through which the minority could be reversed and get the majority, the relationship between turnout and percentage of votes of Social Democratic Party and causes of victory or defeat of each parties in this election especially regarding their coalition policy.

Two short-term factors-serious flooding in Germany, and resistance to US policy on Iraq by the Chancellor Schröder and his Social Democrats-were considered to be decisive for the reelection of the red-green coalition government in the general election in 2002. However, it is difficult to understand fully the election result without accounting for long-term changes in German social structure. The author analyzes long-term German voting behavior, in particular three important factors: the changing effects of gender on voting behavior, the transformation of collective church/union membership, and the influence of the East German electorate since reunification.

The German electoral system is known as a system which combines the principle of proportionality with the relative-majority system of single-member constituencies. In the discussions on electoral reform in Japan, the German electoral system was regarded as an ideal model for the Japanese one. But does the German system really deserve to be admired as an ideal model?<br>In some constituencies in elections to the German 'Bundestag', where political parties are more familiar to voters than individual candidates, voters do not in fact choose a candidate from candidates of two major parties, but one of several candidates belonging to same party. For example, at a constituency in Land Baden-Württemberg, the 'first vote' means that a candidate from the CDU in this constituency is selected and that one of the candidates on the CDU party list is selected.<br>On the other hand there is a tendency in the proportional system for voters to select a party based not only on the party ideology and/or party program, but also on the candidate for Federal Chancellor. For that position the party leader of major parties is often selected. The election in 1990 was noted as a victory by the government parties (CDU/CSU/FDP), because both Chancellor Kohl and Foreign Minister Genscher greatly contributed to the German Unification.<br>But was it true? The Greens failed in the election due to the '5 percent clause'. One of the reasons for that was, that Lafontaine, the Chancellor candidate from the opposition party SPD, was popular among Greens supporters. He asserted that the environmental policy and peace movement, which were proposed by the Greens, are vital. The failure of the Greens increased the numher of ineffectual votes, consequently the shere of votes obtained the greatest parties, the CDU/CSU, rose.