ABSTRACT
The 1980 Bundestag election, in terms of the campaign and apparently in the outcome, could best be described as normal in the sense that for once it was not perceived as a crucial test of German democracy. This chapter explains the conditions of normality in reviewing the results of the election and related aspects of political behaviour. The interpretation of election results is subject to the necessary distinction between the subjective and objective. The FDP performance in Land elections was uneven and more than hinted at the relative instability of its electorate. Regional differentiation has in West German voting behaviour been essentially a consequence of variation in socio-economic structure between the Lander and not of any regionalisation of political consciousness. The presence of Catholic sub-cultural ties buttressing the CSU vote in Bavaria, but their absence in notably Schleswig-Holstein making the CDU electorate there relatively less stable, accounts basically for this North/South divide.
