Heavy losses for the ruling Social Democrats (SPD), big gains for the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU): state elections in Germany, of which there are half a dozen this year, have become predictable. In the Saarland on September 5th, the SPD saw its vote drop by 13.5 points to 30.8%, its worst result there since the war, while the CDU vote rose by two points to 47.5%. Yet the sameness disguises a significant change. With each election it becomes clearer that Germany's political landscape has shifted. Gone are the days when there were two big parties, the CDU and SPD, with a smaller third party tipping the scale. (The Free Democrats-FDP—long played the balancing role, but they have now been overtaken by the Greens.) This set-up is changing in three ways.
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