Vol. 21 · No. 1 · Issue 66 · Spring 2003

Dieter Roth

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Abstract

The 2002 election was a close race. The Social Democrats turned out to be 6,027 votes ahead of the Christian Democrats. The red-green government was returned to power only because of the so-called overhang mandates for the SPD (three in the new Länder, one in Hamburg) and the good result of the Greens, especially in the old Länder. To put it differently, 1.2 percent (577,567 votes) was the win-ning gap between the government and the opposition. Four seats above the majority is a rather narrow margin but does not inevitably entail a weak government. The CDU/CSU-led government in 1994 had a similar starting position, for example, and it endured in power. Under these conditions-and they did not just emerge after the election but were well known before and during the campaign-the outcome of the 2002 election can only be explained by using separate theoretical explanations for different groups of voters. It is also necessary to consider the whole legislative period, not just the months before the campaign. Thus, I shall begin by reviewing the 1998-2002 legislative period, and then I will examine the social group bases of the vote in 2002 as an illustration of the forces that shaped the electoral outcome.