Schröder and Stoiber, 2002
In 2002, Germany held its most competitive election in history between the Social Democratic Party (lead by incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schröder) and the CDU/CSU political alliance (lead by Edmund Stoiber). The election was a really really really close competition, with both parties winning 38.5% of the popular vote and only a difference of 6,027 votes.
So the big question here is: what lead to Stoiber losing the election? The CDU/CSU was very popular, and for many months had been the most popular party in Germany, so why did Stoiber lose?
Well, there were two main issues:
- Stoiber was supportive of the potential invasion of Iraq, which was controversial even before the actual invasion began - this lead to Schröder and the SDP gaining popularity since they took a stance against war in Iraq, which was one of the factors for them securing a second term for the premiership.
- Stoiber had reacted very slowly to the major floods in Europe at the time - he was on vacation. However, Schröder was very fast in his response to the floods, which was the second factor for him remaining as Chancellor.
What if all these issues were resolved? What if Stoiber expressed discontent with the idea of war in Iraq, and had been able to respond to the floods in Europe, leading to the CDU/CSU securing the premiership in the federal election? This leads to a rather different Germany and overall the world geopolitics.
Contributors[]
- ThatAlternateHistoryLad5 (Rosie) (Creator)
- TestingDummyNumber55 (Charles) (Contributor)
- Generated Narukami (Akira) (Contributor)
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