Saturday, February 19, 2005

European Elections Bear Watching

Elections will be held tomorrow in Spain, Portugal, northern Cyprus, and the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany.

I'm particularly interested in the latter polling and have written about it previously. Conventional wisdom would say that with Germany's high unemployment and continued economic sluggishness, the party of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would be in trouble. However, little more than a month ago, polls began to show Schroeder's party running neck and neck with the conservative Christian Democrats. A win for Schroeder's party would bode well for his own re-election later.

A fear is that a neo-Nazi party may win more seats in the state legislature. But my own feeling is that while some young people and those in economic distress may find some attractiveness in the easy answers of latter-day fascism, Germans are generally revolted by anything that smacks of the Third Reich.

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