Twenty years later things look very different as capitalism has entered its most severe crisis since 1929. Now a majority in former East Germany votes for the left and harks back to what was positive about the planned economy.
I'd contest that observation as factually incorrect.
First of all, there hasn't been any sudden surge in support for left-wing parties five years ago (since that's how old that article is) in East Germany. In the 2009 Bundestag election, CDU and FDP won a combined vote of 40.4%, certainly an increase from the 33.3% they had received in 2005, the 34.7% they had received in 2002, or the 30.6% they had received in 1998.
This article is suggesting that the left had gained ground in East Germany in the wake of the global financial crisis, while in reality right-wing parties had just won their biggest share of vote there since 1994. And in 2013, right-wing parties were further gaining ground with CDU, FDP, and AfD winning 47.1% in East Germany (second best result for the right in East Germany since 1990).
It seems the main basis for the article's argument that "a majority in former East Germany votes for the left and harks back to what was positive about the planned economy" is that the Left Party had won "almost" 30% in East Germany in 2009. It's certainly true that the 28.5% they received in 2009 had been the Left Party's (or PDS's) best election result up to that point.
But there's still two things wrong with that observation: 28.5% isn't a majority. The Left Party wasn't even the strongest party in the east in 2009 (the CDU came in first there that year). And the SPD and the Greens certainly aren't supporting a planned economy either. Second, in 2013 the Left Party dropped back to 22.7% in East Germany, their worst showing in that region since 2002.
Now, had that article been written back in 1998, they might have been at least something of a point. Right-wing parties - who had been pretty strong in East Germany in the 1990 and 1994 elections - suffered a major defeat that year and didn't fully recover from that until 2013. But that would mean that Snowtalker had posted a 16-year-old article instead of a five-year-old one.
It's true that left-wing parties are usually stronger in the east than in the west and this is in no small part due to the Left Party. But this has almost always been the case and is not a recent phenomenon. And the right-wing parties were overall gaining ground in the east in recent elections.
