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I just came across a reference to the West German CDU/SPD Grand Coalition government of Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966-69) attempting to change West Germany's voting system. West Germany (and its reunited successor today) used a mixed voting system where half the seats in the Bundestag were filled by MPs elected in (large) FPTP constituencies, while the other half were filled by proportional representation. Apparently the CDU were fed up with the fact that this voting system tends to prevent any one party from gaining a majority, in particular because they disliked having to provide concessions to their usual coalition partners the FDP. Changing the voting system to full FPTP, like Britain or the United States, would likely squeeze the FDP vote (and any other potential smaller parties) and make majority governments by either CDU or SPD the default. Because the SPD were the other biggest party and stood to gain they initially supported the CDU in this attempt to change the voting system, but later backed down.

So what if the SPD had gone through with it and West Germany had adopted a system favouring two-party politics? How would that affect the political development of West Germany since the 1960s (and reunited Germany, assuming that is not affected by the POD)?
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