The German press loves to complain about Chancellor Angela Merkel. She is boring, they say; she shies away from making tough decisions; she prefers the path of least resistance. She lacks panache.

But in these times of economic crisis, it appears that German voters could do with a steady hand. That, at least, seems to be the lesson of the European election result in Germany. Merkel's conservatives came out on top of the heap, with 37.9 percent of the vote.

More surprising, though, is that the center-left Social Democrats slid to an historic low, a 20.8 percent result that was even worse that the center-left party's tally in European Parliament elections five years ago. Even more surprising, the vote total came despite the party's clear support for helping struggling German companies with public money as a way to save thousands of jobs.

Hard Slide to the Left

It was an election platform that the party went out of its way to emphasize in the days prior to the European vote. "We want to show that we don't just save industrial jobs, but also in the service sector and jobs for women," party head Franz Müntefering told the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag last week.

Müntefering was referring to retail giant Arcandor, which owns the struggling department store chain Karstadt. He and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is the SPD's candidate for the Chancellery in fall elections, both threw their support behind a bailout for the tottering giant, much in the same way that the SPD backed plans to prop up German carmaker Opel late last month.

The voters, though, were having none of it. Even as Merkel's Christian Democrats also slid back from their European results from 2004, the tally means that a governing coalition with the business-friendly Free Democrats, who upped their total to 11 percent on Sunday, is an eminently realistic possibility in Germany's autumn vote.

More than that, though, it means that the SPD's hard slide to the left in recent years -- combined with its economic populism of late -- has proven remarkably unsuccessful. Indeed, Germany's voters, it would seem, are unsure as to what, if anything, the Social Democrats stand for anymore.

Chasing Down Wayward Supporters

Ironically, the seeds for Sunday's debacle, which saw the lowest SPD result in any nation-wide election since World War II, were sown during a period of remarkable success for the party. Under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the SPD led a coalition which set about passing far-reaching reforms to the country's cradle-to-grave welfare system. Known as Agenda 2010, the measures included significant cuts to unemployment benefits as well as measures meant to slash unemployment.

The measures, successful though they ultimately proved to be, were difficult to swallow for the Social Democratic faithful. Schröder lost his job to Merkel in 2005 and the party immediately began haemorrhaging members, many of them joining the far-left Left Party out of protest against their own party's centrism. In recent years, the SPD has been drifting back to the left in an effort to chase down its wayward supporters.

The result has been on full display in this election year. Early on in the Opel crisis, when it became clear that the automaker's parent General Motors was sliding toward bankruptcy, Steinmeier pledged his support for the company and argued that the government in Berlin should do all it could to keep the company alive. When Economics Minister Karl-Theodor von Guttenberg argued in favor of an Opel bankruptcy, the SPD blasted him for being a heartless technocrat.

At first, the shtick seemed to work. Merkel's government opted to help Opel, offering up €1.5 billion in bridge financing and mid-wifing the sale of Opel to a consortium including Canadian-Austrian auto parts manufacturer Magna and the Russian bank Sberbank.

Unconvincing Pro-Job Populism

But it quickly became apparent that the SPD didn't stick around for the post-mortem. While the party gleefully began preparing its next coup, loudly demanding that Berlin step in to save Arcandor, an increasing chorus of voices started questioning whether it made sense for the government to save companies with questionable futures. Even as Steinmeier began aiming his attacks at Guttenberg, it became apparent that many were actually grateful that the economics minister saw his primary duty as that of preventing German tax money from being thrown away.

Indeed, Merkel on Monday, herself no slouch in seeing which way the political winds are blowing, offered Guttenberg high praise. "Mr. Guttenberg has done a fantastic job in the last 120 days," she said. "I will certainly be counting on him in the future." The chancellor herself has also distinguished herself by taking careful baby steps rather than rash leaps when it comes to her government's response to the financial crisis and ensuing economic downturn -- a policy she has shown no sign of abandoning in recent days.

That is almost certainly bad news for the Social Democrats. German voters have shown no small degree of appreciation for Merkel's steadiness of late, with poll after poll showing her well ahead of Steinmeier in head-to-head surveys. The SPD's pro-job populism seems to have convinced few.