Policies, Programmes and Personalities: The Post-1998 PDS

Abstract

The 1998 federal election was a milestone in the PDS’s short history. On 27 September over 2 5 million voters put their cross next to the party’s name. Just over 2 million (2,054,773) were resident in the eastern states (21.6 per cent of eastern voters), and 460,000 in western Germany (1.2 per cent of all western voters). The slightly improved performance in the West (the PDS polled 91,000 votes more than it did in 1994) was enough to push the PDS’s national percentage of the vote over the crucial 5 per cent mark. The margin for error was small; had 55,000 PDS voters opted to support another party on election day, then the PDS would — once again — have been entering the Bundestag as a parliamentary group rather than a fully fledged parliamentary party.1 That the PDS now enjoyed Fraktionsstärke (the status of a parliamentary party) entitled it to more money (to fund the activities of its Fraktion), granted its politicians more time to speak in parliamentary debates (important in terms of gaining visibility and publicity) and to representation on significant parliamentary committees. The PDS was also able to fund a political foundation, which it duly did, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, based at Franz-Mehring-Platz, in eastern Berlin.2 KeywordsForeign PolicyVote ShareGrand CoalitionFederal ElectionParliamentary DebateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.