Unequal erosion of large parties in Europe
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  Unequal erosion of large parties in Europe
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Author Topic: Unequal erosion of large parties in Europe  (Read 449 times)
President Johnson
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« on: September 22, 2017, 05:06:18 AM »

What we have seen in Europe is the erosion of most so called "people's parties". Meaning, the two large political parties, conservatives and social democrats, lost a lot of their voters. I believe the main reasons are complex, but have something with globalization, the financial crisis and the recession etc. But what we have seen in most contries is that the center-left parties eroded much worse and have not recovered. Conservative parties lost too, but many recovered to some extent. Sure, there are some exceptions like the U.K. and Italy to some degree, but in other countries it looks terrible:

- Germany: SPD is down for almost ten years now. In some states, we've become a minor party. And the next disaster is looming for Sept. 24, despite a good program and a good candidate. CDU is never below 32% in recent polls, even doing better now than in 2005 when Merkel took office.

- Greece: PASOK is de facto dead. For sure, they are also responsible for all of Greece's problems. But the ND (conservatives) are equally responsible. Their polling numbers are up again.

- France: Same with the PS. Did mistakes, but not as bad as the UMP. But the UMP is still not doing not so bad than the PS.

- Spain: Their Socialists are down, too. The Conservatives also lost support in recent years, but are at a somewhat stable condition.

- Netherlands: The Worker's Party was humiliated in the last election. Rutte with his conservatives also lost, but not nearly as bad.

- Many countries in eastern-Europe even don't have a center-left party in the legislature anymore. There you have the choice between moderate conservatives and right-wing populists. Like Poland. Hungary is even worse.


Any ideas what the reasons are? Some might say they are not left enough, but more leftist parties often don't do much better (even SYRIZA in Greece dropped to >20% in the polls). If the German SPD is not left enough, then Die Linke should be at 20% or 30%, but they're in single digits. I believe that conservative supporters are much less likely to cast a protest vote or stay home, and are more of the kind "I vote for my party no matter what". Left or progressive voters are much more unforgiving. Sadly, because I personally believe that most challenges of the day are best solved by center-left policies.
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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #1 on: September 23, 2017, 09:43:58 AM »

Let's go back to 1960 and find a typical conservative and a typical social democratic voter. Let's say a 60 year old churchgoing banker's wife, and a 35 year old irreligious manual labourer. Now fast forward to the present and look at their 2017 counterparts. What's changed?

For the conservative voter, not much. She is still engaged in the community, and her concerns still match up with conservative parties. Not so for our social democrat. Social changes have left him isolated, and he probably votes less than his 1960 version did. Additionally there's a lot more daylight between himself and the social democratic parties. He doesn't support freer markets or immigration, but social democratic politicians do.  He probably stays home or votes for one of the various right or left populist parties.
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