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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/international/europe/03GERM.html?th
BERLIN, Monday, Feb. 3 — German voters delivered a stinging rebuke to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving the main opposition party record gains in two closely watched state elections, according to results reported early today.
The conservative Christian Democratic Party won 48 percent of the vote in Lower Saxony, which is Mr. Schröder's home state and the place he served as chief minister for eight years before he became chancellor in 1998.
On Friday, Mr. Schröder, who made half a dozen campaign appearances in Lower Saxony alone, asserted in a final campaign appearance in Hanover, the state capital, that the "federal government would do everything it could to prevent a war in Iraq." But none of that was able to arrest his party's fall from favor.
Edmund Stoiber, whom Mr. Schröder defeated in the presidential contest in September, declared that the Social Democrats' defeat was of "historic dimensions."
The Christian Democrats' party chairwoman, Angela Merkel, said people in Germany "refused to be seduced a second time by a mood of fear" she said Mr. Schröder had created.
"This is an important signal to the European allies and to the American government," she told The Associated Press.
Nope, but I'm not claiming to know what the Germans think.
And since there has been nothing happening in the last few months to change the public's opinion on Iraq (if anything they'd be more opposed then ever given the dodgier-by-the-day position of the US and UK) it seems clear that the Germans are protesting at Schröder's handling of the economy, not his stance on Iraq. America and Britain have failed to convince anybody about the case for war save a couple of public mood-removed right-wing Prime Ministers. I doubt they are going to convince overnight a whole nation that was firmly opposed to the war the other day.
"This is an important signal to the European allies and to the American government," she told The Associated Press.
How can this be read any other way. He's a jerk who got in by bashing America. And now the jerk's on his way out.
Even though the economy's a mess in Germany that's not what the winning party said.
Let me show you how this can be read in another way:
"Beleagured German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has vowed to press ahead faster with a programme of reforms, despite suffering an election mauling in two key regional polls.
Voters in Mr Schroeder's home state, Lower Saxony, and in Hesse deserted the Social Democrats in their hundreds of thousands.
The elections were seen as a crucial test for Mr Schroeder, whose government is reeling from the effects of economic problems, unemployment and rising taxes.
Mr Schroeder told reporters on Monday that he accepted primary responsibility for the party's collapse - which he described as "one of the most bitter defeats I have known".
"We have to speed up the tempo of change," he said.
He said that the government would have to work harder to bring down unemployment, and to improve the health system."
Source
The winning party can claim whatever they want. It doesn't mean a thing.
You fail to realise that it's more a case of Social Democrats not voting for their party in these regional elections than everybody turning to the Christian Democrats because they have suddenly seen the light. The Christian Democrats, like their colleagues in Spain and Italy, are only too happy to adhere to the right wing policies of the White House if given the chance.