Here in Germany - Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats have more members than the Social Democrats for the first time since the CDU was founded in 1945. The CDU now has just over 530-thousand members. The Social Democrat party has half the membership it did in 1990. Many Social Democrats have been dissatisfied with what are known as the Hartz- labour market reforms. They were initiated by the previous, Social Democrat chancellor Gehard Schröder and involved cutting benefits for the unemployed.