Far-right Party Fares Poorly in State Elections in Berlin

Germany’s far-right Republican party fared poorly in Sunday’s Berlin state elections, gaining only 2.7 percent of the vote.

The total was below what is needed for representation in Berlin’s governing assembly, but it was higher than the 2.5 percent of voter support garnered by the Free Democratic Party, which is the junior coalition partner in Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s federal government.

The vote, which took place five years after the reunification of Germany, indicated the presence of an invisible political wall separating the eastern and western portions of the city.

The Party of Democratic Socialism – the successor party to the hardline Communists who once ruled East Germany – won 36 percent of the vote in eastern Berlin, making it the most popular party in that portion of the city.

In western Berlin, Kohl’s Christian Democrats won 45.4 percent of the vote. The party, which came in with 37.4 percent of the vote citywide, is expected to continue its leadership role in the Berlin assembly, along with the Social Democrats, who won 23.6 percent.

Germany’s national government is scheduled to move by the end of the decade from Bonn to Berlin, when was restored as the country’s capital after reunification, in 1990.

The 2.7 percent showing of the far-right Republicans, who needed at least 5 percent of the vote to the represented in the Berlin assembly, was below the 3.1 percent they achieved in the last Berlin state election in 1990.

In the October 1994 federal elections, the Republicans achieved little voter support.

The various parties on Germany’s radical right, of which the Republicans are the best known, have platforms ranging from the expression of extreme nationalism to open anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism.