Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW) is the federal state with the highest population in Germany, with almost 18 million inhabitants and over 13 million that are entitled to vote. In comparison to entire Germany with almost 82 million inhabitants and over 62 million entitled voters, nearly a quarter of Germanys population had to decide by whom they want to be represented in the federal government of NRW.
Due to quantity of voters the NRW Elections that took place in May 2010 can be seen as the “small Bundestagswahl”. After the Bundetagswahl in September 2009, the ending of the Grand Coalition and the beginning of the CDU/FDP Coalition (Black-Yellow Coalition) the results of the NRW Elections can refer to its residents contentment of the governing parties through the past year.
Interpreting the results of the NRW Election can refer to the satisfaction of the voters with the federal government; in fact politicians and experts come to the conclusion that most voters are not very satisfied with the government respectively the Black-Yellow Coalition, because both parties lost many voters.
As the CDU lost their majority in NRW − now the SPD is enabled to take over the government in NRW − they also lost the majority in the Bundesrat (a legislative Federal Constitutional Body that represents the sixteen Länder (federal states) of Germany at the federal level) that is necessary to resolve new laws. This leads to serious changes in NRW (Rüttgers hands in his resignation), increases the power of the SPD in the Bundesrat, and this again leads to conflicts in the Black-Yellow Coalition of the german government.
I.e. the case of tax reduction: The leading Coalition − especially the FDP − demanded and promised tax reduction, while the opposition and experts affirmed that tax reduction would cause even more harm to Germany.
Quickly after loosing the majority in the Bundesrat the Black-Yellow Coalition ”decided" that tax reduction is probably not the right way of dealing the financial problems that occurred with the financial crisis.