Political Developments

THE RESULT OF THE 1980 ELECTION, which saw the governing parties increase their share of the vote, can, as noted earlier, be regarded less as an endorsement of Helmut's Schmidt's government than as a rejection by the electorate of Franz Josef Strauß as a potential chancellor. Given that he was particularly unpopular in the north German states, the election emphasized the traditional German divide between Protestant north and Catholic south, which had been overshadowed by the postwar East-West division. Nor was the continuation of the SPD-FDP coalition the cause of any widespread enthusiasm. Without Strauß it might have come to an end earlier, as one reason for its existence, Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, was no longer at the top of the political agenda and divergent attitudes within the coalition on economic policies were becoming more apparent. It was these divergences, together with the desire of the FDP to show it was not tied to one coalition partner forevermore, that led to the end of the coalition in 1982, with Schmidt being ousted and replaced by the CDU leader Helmut Kohl as a result of the FDP switching its allegiance. Specifically, the change of government was made possible by the mechanism of the constructive vote of no confidence, which means that, unlike in the Weimar Republic, a government can only be toppled if there is a majority for a successor administration.