A “Third Force” for Change? German Voters Shift Favors and Votes to the Greens

The Center for American Progress and Heinrich Boell Stiftung North America invite you to a panel discussion:

A “Third Force” for Change?  German Voters Shift Favors and Votes to the Greens

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Germany’s political party system has seen dramatic voter shifts in the past year, none more powerful than the continued weakness of the two main conservative and social democratic parties and the recent rapid rise of the German Greens as the strong “third force” of German party politics in polls.  Voter dissatisfaction and some tiredness of many voters with the “old” parties and their “politics-as-usual” approach on the one hand, but also possibly more permanent shifts in electoral preferences and priorities might explain these dynamics.  Will the high approval rating for the German Greens translate into votes and mandates in upcoming state elections?  What do these shifts in voter preferences and loyalties mean for all parties’ efforts to redefine their core electorate, reach out to these voters in an invigorated fashion and sharpen and refocus their political programmatic?  Does the German experience hold lessons for the United States? 

Moderated by:

Michael Werz is a Senior Fellow at American Progress where his work as member of the National Security Team focuses on climate migration and security as well as transatlantic foreign policy including Turkey

Featured Speakers:

Prof. Dr. Lothar Probst is managing director of the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies at the University in Bremen in Germany, where he has directed research and academic studies in the area of elections, the German political party system and voter participation as well as new social movements and theories of democracy building and promotion.

Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and American Progress. He is also a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, where he recently co-directed a joint Brookings-American Enterprise Institute project on political demography and geography, “The Future of Red, Blue and, Purple America,” and wrote a series of reports with William Frey on the political geography of battleground states in the 2008 election