Demographics. When the Green Party emerged in the early 1980s, they made it into the Bundestag pretty quickly because they could draw votes from a large base o

Demographics. When the Green Party emerged in the early 1980s, they made it into the Bundestag pretty quickly because they could draw votes from a large base of young voters (the babyboomers). Nowadays young voters are a tiny fringe group so their votes hardly make a dent. That makes it more difficult than it used to be for a party representing (more or a less) their generation to cross the 5% hurdle. The U18 vote which was carried out yesterday resulted in 12% for the Pirate Party: http://www.u18.org/das-projekt-u18/ http://www.u18.org/das-projekt-u18/ Cynically speaking, the situation may look brighter for the Pirate Party in 4 years when more pensioners are dead.