The blue-collar electorate and the left wing of the SPD never forgave Schroeder for Hartz IV.15 The left wing split from the SPD to unify with the former Communists of the East. The result was a new party known as Die Linke, which gathered almost 10 percent of the electorate. Together, Die Linke, the SPD and the Greens were a powerful political force. Red-Red-Green was capable of winning a majority. But the bitter divisions between them over Agenda 2010 made a broad-based center-left coalition difficult to imagine.
