Brandenburg state election, 2004

The Brandenburg state election, 2004, was conducted on September 19, 2004, to elect members to the Landtag of Brandenburg, the state legislature of Brandenburg.

Issues and Campaign

Before Brandenburg, the SPD had lost many state elections, what was connected to Gerhard Schröder's Agenda 2010 policy, which was a reaction to the problems of constantly high unemployment in Germany. The establishing of a lower welfare payment (called Hartz IV after an expert who had invented it) for people unemployed for more than a year had driven many voters to the left Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) party in the east, to the new-founded WASG in the west or away from the elections at all. Since 2003 the CDU had won more and more states, whereas the SPD suffered a string of heavy defeats.

In Brandenburg, both minister-president Matthias Platzeck (SPD) and his partner Jörg Schönbohm (CDU) supported the labour reforms. Against this campaigned the PDS and the far-right German People's Union (DVU), which had gained seats in the Landtag in 1999 for the first time.

Results

Party Party List votes Vote percentage (change) Total Seats (change) Seat percentage
Social Democratic Party (SPD) 372,942 31.9% -7.4% 33 -4 37.5%
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) 326,801 28.0% +4.7% 29 +7 33.0%
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 227,062 19.4% -7.1% 20 -5 22.7%
Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) 71,045 6.1% +0.8% 6 +1 6.8%
Alliance '90/The Greens 42,087 3.6% +1.7% 0 +0 0.0%
Free Democratic Party (FDP) 38,890 3.3% +1.4% 0 +0 0.0%
Family Party of Germany (Familie) 30,843 2.6% +2.6% 0 +0 0.0%
All Others 59,239 5.1% +3.3% 0 +0 0.0%
Totals 1,168,909 100.0%   88 -1 100.0%
Seat results -- SPD in red, CDU in black, PDS in pink, DVU in brown

Despite predictions that the PDS could become strongest party in an election for the first time, the SPD managed to remain in front, but dropped significantly. The CDU also lost votes and fell into third place.

Post-election

Matthias Platzeck (SPD) remained Minister-President and continued the previous SPD-CDU coalition.

Sources

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