I could use one of my favourite quotes today: “Same Procedure as Last Year?”

You see today, almost one year to the day, Hessen has to return to the polling stations and vote for a new state government (Landtag).

But it would not be right to say that nothing has changed in that year and we are repeating the excercise.

Let’s take a quick look at the parties:

CDU

The CDU has been fairly quiet this year, although I did see them out on a local supermarket car park last year canvassing for votes.  Compaired to last year, they have stopped talking about crimes allegedly committed by foreign youths, and have got on with the work of producing some new ideas, or just promoting those that worked well in the past.  In my opinion, this may well be enough to win.

SPD

The SPD had a turbulent time last year.  Although at they were in a position to form a minority coalition last year twice, both attempts were blocked by MPs from their own party.  This has definitely not helped their reputation.  It also did not help that they were going to accept help from a party (Die Linke) that they had previously said they would not work together with.

But their candidate last year, Andrea Ypsilanti, probably did not help matters by trying to stay on for a second chance, and even when she did make way for a new candidate, it was her personal choice who were selected to stand and she herself remains both head of the local party and of the parliamentary group.

I don’t believe that this is a good way to show that the party has learned from last year’s experience and is ready to make changes.  In fact, it looks like quite the opposite.

Another critisism of the SPD is that they are spending too much time on criticising the CDU, and not enough time telling voters what their own policies would be, if elected.

Oh, and appearing on the celebrity edition of “Who want’s to be a Millionaire?” probably didn’t help Fr.Ypsilanti’s image either…

FDP and Grüne

The FDP and the Green party have been very quiet this time round.  We have not had any election pamphlets in our letter box, and I have not seen anyone canvassing out on the streets (or supermarket car park).

In the media, they appear to be keeping a low profile, especially the Green party.  This is in comparison to last year, where the lines were clearly drawn about who would enter a coalition with whom.

Die Linke

You could say that this is the party that caused all the problem last year, by entering the Landestag and making it so difficult to form a coalition amongst the other parties.  But perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing, because it meant that we were able to see the true face of some of those parties’ politics.

New Trends

Many of the parties have take a look at the US elections last year, and have been trying to emulate Barack Obama’s success on the internet.  They have are using Twitter, Wer-kennt-wen, YouTube, and even make.tv.  This might explain why we haven’t had any flyers in our letter box from most of them.

The morning I even found a bag of rolls with portions of liver sausage and jam from the CDU, with a note on them asking us to go and vote.  They had literally left a bag of rolls on everyone’s doorstep or hanging on their front door handle in the entire neighbourhood!

Now, I may be a big fan of Web 2.0, but a free bag of rolls on a Sunday morning is a lot more use to many people than a video podcast.  Not that it will make any difference to my decision today, as I am not eligible to vote in this election.

But at the end of the day, I am beginning to wonder who will have had a bigger influence on voters: the Koch or the Bäcker?