So Germany voted. Yesterday. New Bundestag, which is our federal parliament and which will elect the new chancellor. Which will be the old chancellor but in a new coalition - not with the Social Democrats anymore but with the Liberal Democrats. Congratulations to chancellor Merkel and the winning parties.
Almost needless to give a link or viewing the final result of the election. I's everywhere in the German press today. So here's just one for the FAZ online site with the election results.
There's one remarkable result and that is the amount of support which the new German Piratenpartei (Pirate Party) managed to get. They got roughly 2% of the votes cast. This is not enough for sending a representative into the parliament. But with around 2% they are the largest group of those "other" parties who are below the clipping level. And with the young and digitally educated people the Piratenpartei has got a huge support of over 10%. So no wonder that they were very happy with the election results as is reported, for instance, by Die Zeit. In some university towns with a strong technical focus they got more than 3%.
The Piratenpartei is bringing up new topics - almost all, so far, focussing on issues around the internet, copyright, patents, etc. They reach out to the generation internet to some extend.
In a recent article in the German FAZ Sonntagszeitung Frank Schirrmacher, chief editor of the Feuilleton, gave a very informative and forward looking analysis of the Piratenpartei and of nerds in general.
After yesterday's election, the Piratenpartei is certainly a group that can't be ignored anymore. Time will show whether it's a new party on the horizon like the Greens were 30+ years ago. But I'm sure that the polical establishment will, from now on, take a closer look at the generation internet.
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