Germany's major federal opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), started with an impressive victory in the "super election year" 2004. For the first time since World War II, the CDU won an absolute majority of seats in the state legislature of Hamburg. The city that had been governed for half a century (1946–53, 1957–2001) by Social Democrats. The outcome of this election had mainly local reasons: the aversion of many voters to Hamburg's former "Staatspartei" SPD which had to accept its worst post-World War II election result in the city; the vanishing of the populist "Schill Party" which had won 20 percent of the votes in 2001 and whose voters – after a series of political scandals – switched mostly to the CDU in 2004; and, finally, the overwhelming popularity of Mayor Ole von Beust (CDU). The stunning defeat of the SPD in Hamburg was aggravated by the negative image of the federal party which the voters held accountable for the unpopular political reforms of the federal government under the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder. The leader of the opposition in Berlin, Angela Merkel (CDU), emerges from the Hamburg election stronger than ever.