Succès d'Estime For German Pirate Party

Hence, when adding up the political 'blocks'

• CDU/CSU plus FDP (49%)
• SPD plus Die Linke plus Bündnis90/Die Grünen (45%)
• Others (6%)

we see that the political divide in Germany is more head-to-head than what can be deduced when looking at the stable majority of seats for the new Government.

The German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei) might end up at approximately 2%; hence, they will by no means get any seats in the Parliament this time. This is significantly less than what could be expected according to a poll published a few weeks ago.

As it looks now, they earned significantly more votes in big cities and university towns and less in rural areas. For example, in Berlin they ended up at 3,4%. The share of votes of Piratenpartei amongst male first time voters is said to be at approximately 13%. It really seems to be the preferred party of the German 'geeks'.

Compared to 0,9% gained at the elections for the European Parliament earlier this year they have more than doubled their votes within a few months.

The membership statistics for the Piratenpartei is quite impressive:

Membership Statistics of German Piratenpartei
(Blue line = date of European elections, green line = date of national elections)

When assessing the likely consequences of all that:

• No immediate big changes of the general direction of German politics with regard to Intellectual Property is to be expected.
• The Piratenpartei will have no direct parliamentary influence whatsoever; however, seen as a political movement, they have gained something like a Succès d'Estime.

The Piratenpartei now will face the challenge to change gear from high-power campaigning to a much slower continuous work, especially in view of integrating the enormous number of newcomers who have joined during the past months. Maybe that they will be battered by bitter internal rows on the general orientation of their further development of their political programme up to destruction; however, I would be more inclined to assume that they will more or less steadily evolve over the coming years to a visible force on the political stage in Germany quite like the Greens did it some thirty years ago.

The most interesting question is how many influence their mere existence will exert on the strategists of other parties, in particular of the FDP. The campaign has sent a very clear message to all parties in Germany that there is a growing group of civil libertarian, Internet-savvy and more or less well-educated young folks who feel not be represented in their core beliefs by any of the existing parties except Piratenpartei. And, of course, top brass personnel in each of the established parties will sit down and think about how to lure a portion of the Piratenpartei followers away by offering certain concessions.

My personal view is that CDU/CSU, on the one hand, will be the most conservative and Internet-averse party which is least inclined to offer concessions to Piratenpartei followers whereas the FDP, on the other hand, might be willing to go a mile or two to meet those Piraten folks. Now, as CDU/CSU will form a coalition government, it will be interesting to see what finally will come out of such processes.

The most prominent desires of current Piratenpartei appear to be in the field of defending civil liberties, and the FDP traditionally might love to pay at least some lip-service in that direction. But CDU/CSU will then eventually decide how far FDP will be allowed to go in Govermental reality, and perhaps this might turn out to be a quite small distance.

Now, after the stressing and exhausting campaigning work, I expect the Piratenpartei to continue also with their internal discussions on the future of Intellectual Property. It might take a year or even longer until some results are visible, I guess. After that, the crucial question will be as to what extent in particular the FDP is ready to adopt potentially adverse positions with regard to Intellectual Property in order to please the upcoming generation of politicised and discontent Digital Natives.