Upstarts Continue to Hijack Votes in Germany KIEL, GERMANY - When the results in Germany's most recent state election came down, the Pirate Party cued up what could be their new theme song: "We are the Champions" by the rock group Queen blared from the speakers as exit polls showed the young party entering the third regional legislature in three elections. The 8.2 percent share of the vote the Pirates won on Sunday in Schleswig-Holstein, the largely rural, northernmost state, solidified the presence of the upstart party in Germany's political landscape, proving its ability to attract voters beyond the Twittersphere who are fed up with a political bureaucracy they view as disconnected from the people. The Pirates drew thousands of voters from the traditional center-right and center-left parties, an analysis of the results showed, in addition to about 10,000 voters who cast ballots for the first time. Their next challenge comes this Sunday, when an election will be held in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. Although the Pirate Party, formed six years ago in Berlin, has dropped recently in the polls, it looks poised to earn enough ballots to clear the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in the state legislature there as well. Such a showing would be an important milestone for the party, given that nearly a quarter of the German population calls the state home, and it would undoubtedly add a new dimension to the political pressures heaped on Chancellor Angela Merkel as she tries to navigate the competing domestic and European-wide demands about how best to address the euro crisis. "If the Pirates can do well in an unfavorable environment, like North Rhine-Westphalia," said Oskar Niedermayer, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin, "then it is a good reason to say that they have a strong chance in the next general election." The Pirates have built their success on little more than a vague platform of greater openness in government, using technology. Though they have failed to offer their own solutions to the Continent's economic crisis, the Pirates have succeeded in attracting protest voters, an angry share of the electorate that is expanding even in Germany, though for reasons opposite those of many other parts of Europe. Weary of the pains of austerity, voters in France on Sunday elected the Socialist François Hollande, who has promised to make growth Europe's new priority. In parliamentary elections, Greek voters, too, balked at the heavy costs of the belt-tightening that Ms. Merkel has demanded. Germans, on the other hand, appear increasingly wary of the costs that the bailouts and pro-growth policies advocated by Europeans elsewhere may end up costing them. The Pirates have expanded their base by tapping into those fears, as well as addressing the feeling among many Germans that decisions regarding the euro crisis have been made over their heads, in ways not fully transparent. Many feel that Germans, unlike other Europeans, did the hard work of reform for themselves in the 1990s and that the troubles of their neighbors now threaten to strip them of the rewards. The result has been a flight from the political center that is forcing change upon - even fragmenting - Germany's once predictable tendency toward stable two-party coalitions, at least at the regional level. A three-party government appears to be the most likely option in Schleswig-Holstein, where the Pirates drew 14,000 votes each from Ms. Merkel's center-right conservative party and its partners in government, the Free Democrats, according to Infratest dimap, a research institute. The main opposition parties suffered an exodus of equal measure, with 10,000 voters turning their backs on the Social Democrats in favor of the Pirates, and 13,000 shifting their support from the Green Party. The results extend a trend that has been building for years, as voters move away from the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. Many had once flocked to the Greens, or the Left Party, formed in 2007, when the successor party to East Germany's Communists teamed up with leftists from western states. Now it is the Pirate Party's turn. A poll this year put the Pirates ahead of the Greens at the national level for the first time. "This is a party that is angering other parties," said Joachim Krause, a political scientist at the University of Kiel.