What does Hamburg mean for the SPD?
12 March 2011 _ Michael Miebach A strong economic platform delivered a resounding victory for the SPD’s Olaf Scholz in Hamburg. Desperately trying to win back frustrated voters from the left looks futile. The German social democrats started this election year with a landslide victory, winning 48.3% of the vote in the state elections in the city of Hamburg on 20 February – an absolute majority in a five-party system. Frontrunner Olaf Scholz won the election on an explicitly pragmatic and centrist platform. This resounding victory was swiftly followed by an inner-party dispute over how to interpret the result. Some argued that Hamburg was a special case. No lessons could be drawn from the Christian Democrats being scrapped after ten years in office and the Green party discredited for abandoning the governing coalition. Plus, they argued, the city has only 1.8 million inhabitants and looks back to a long civic and mercantile tradition. All of this is true. Yet the magnitude of SPD’s victo
