Landmark Elections in Germany

Abstract

For one reason or another, elections are often associated with geographical catastrophes. Electoral analyses frequently use the terms electoral earthquake or landslide election to refer to particularly dramatic electoral upheavals like the famous 1973 Danish elections which brought an unprecedented five new parties to the Riksdag, totalling more than one third of the total vote. Given that Germany has thus far been a model of fairly undramatic electoral developments it is only appropriate that Willie Paterson and his co-author refrained from using overly dramatic language and preferred to call the 1972 electoral contest ‘an important landmark in the history of the Federal Republic’ (Irving and Paterson, 1972, p. 237). Yet the term ‘landmark’ indicates that something special must have happened at that particular polling day. But what exactly?