On September 14th, 14 million eligible voters in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state, will head to the polls to elect their local governments. Also, there lies the Ruhr region, once the industrial engine of the nation and the traditional stronghold of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Yet after decades of structural decline and political neglect, the Social Democrats appear to have forfeited their long-standing claim to power. Nationwide, the AfD has already overtaken them as the leading party among workers and now seeks to breach even the last red bastions. What unfolds here is a magnified image of a European malaise: social democracy faces nothing less than an existential crisis.
The SPD has been harder hit than any other political family by deindustrialisation. But the problem runs deeper. The party has drifted so far from the lived experience of working people that electoral defeats scarcely elicit a response anymore. In this, German social democracy is simply retracing the path of its sister parties across Europe.
The Heartland hollowed out
Nowhere was the SPD more firmly rooted than in the Ruhr. For decades, its towns and districts were governed almost exclusively by Social Democrats; its constituencies were regarded as impregnable. But the region never recovered from the collapse of coal and steel.
Gelsenkirchen still tops the unemployment charts, with 15.3% out of work compared to a national average of 6.2%. In Duisburg and Dortmund, around one in three children grows up in welfare-dependent households. The entire Ruhr is threaded with tram and subway lines that were once meant to form an integrated network—until the money ran out, leaving only fragments. Essen and Duisburg each carry debts of more than €2 billion. The region’s per capita economic output lags about 20% behind the German average.
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