West Germany: Setback for Willy

West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, regroomed in the dashing image of West Berlin’s Mayor Willy Brandt, is already working hard to beat out Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his Christian Democrats in next fall’s national election. The Socialists’ first big test of strength came last week in communal elections involving 40% of the West German electorate. The results were hardly encouraging.

Though the Socialists traditionally do better in local elections than in national ones, Adenauer’s Christian Democrats ran nearly 400,000 votes ahead of the Socialists in heavily industrialized North Rhine-Westphalia—a Christian Democratic gain of 7% of the total vote over the last local elections in 1956. In the Socialist stronghold of Lower Saxony, the Christian Democrats polled 28% of the vote, v. 20% in 1956. The Socialists barely managed to hold onto their 39%.

One reason for the poor Socialist showing seemed to be that old-line left-wing activists were at best lukewarm about the new “bourgeois” look that Brandt has given his party, while Brandt has not won over the middle-class and younger voters he hoped to convert.