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BERLIN – Two heavy defeats for the Social Democrats of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the last state elections and the contrasting state of his ruling partners mean turbulence for the ruling coalition in Berlin.
In Sunday’s election for the legislature of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous province, the center-left SDP lost heavily after personally including Scholz in his campaign.
The party dropped to the lowest level ever in the state of 26.7 percent of the vote – nine points behind the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU). Friedrich Merz, the national leader of the CDU, jumped for joy on Monday and wanted to equalize with Scholz. Merz, who leads the opposition in Berlin, said the election was “a very clear response from the federal government, and the chancellor in particular.”
The Social Democrats also suffered a crushing loss to the CDU a week earlier in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. Although the party’s hopes of winning this country have always been slim, the scale of its defeat – it came more than 25 points behind the CDU – is tantamount to humiliation.
Here is how the result in North Rhine-Westphalia affects the three ruling parties in Berlin:
1. The Greens on the march
Only one of the three parties in the national government has consistently won the election since the coalition took office: the Greens. In North Rhine-Westphalia, they tripled their results in the last election to win 18.2 per cent of the vote, third after the HDZ and the SDP.
The party is taking advantage of the strong performance of Green Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Analena Burbock, and its carbon reduction program has come to the fore as Germany regrets relying on Russian fossil fuels.
To their joy – and to the grief of the SPD – is that the Greens are now kings in North Rhine-Westphalia: they could form a governing alliance with the CDU and its current prime minister, Hendrik Wust, or try to create something together. with SPD.
The alliance between the HDZ and the Greens is by no means unheard of: the party is in its second term as a partner of the HDZ in the state of Hesse, for example. But if the Greens choose this option now in such an important state – and only six months after the mandate of the new national government – it will not be good for their partners in Berlin and will raise questions about their loyalty.
Another option would be to try to replicate the SPD’s federal “traffic light coalition”, the Greens and the Liberal Free Democrats (FDP) – named after members’ party colors – in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Although theoretically this is a decision for the regional party branch, national green leaders will also have a big say. Britta Hasselmann, leader of the Bundestag group of the Greens, praised the traffic light government on Monday as “a progressive coalition with a clear agenda”. But she made it clear that North Rhine-Westphalia was a different situation. “In Dusseldorf, we will now see what we are doing with this strong result,” she said, adding significantly: “But I am absolutely certain that there is no way around the Greens.”
The great candidate of the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia Mona Neubaur speaks at the election party of the Greens after the exit poll in North Rhine-Westphalia | Thomas Lones / Getty Images
2. SPD dreams of
Leading PSD politicians expect the Greens to help strengthen the Berlin government after a difficult first six months of harsh criticism on issues ranging from the COVID vaccine mandate to the level of its support for Ukraine. . And that would mean joining the PSD in North Rhine-Westphalia.
If Habek and Burbock do not stop outpacing the Social Democrats in the ratings of approval, they can at least help them cling to their hopes of retaining power in the country, so the PSD’s thinking seems to be moving.
PSD leader Lars Klingbail has insisted that the people of North Rhine-Westphalia want the PSD and the Greens to form a government, citing some pre-election polls.
But the two parties alone will not have a majority in the state parliament. On Monday, PSD Secretary-General Kevin Kuhnert tried to woo the Free Democrats as a third partner, suggesting that the HDZ had aggressively targeted FDP voters in the election campaign, even though the two parties are part of the same outgoing government.
Although he relied heavily on the national PSD for support, the party’s defeated leading candidate, Thomas Kuchati, now seems to have decided that this is not such a great idea. Asked if his campaign had been marred by controversy over PSD Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht taking his older son on a government helicopter on holiday, he said: “It certainly didn’t help.”
Scholz, for his part, does not seem to see the election result as a reason to change course – including in Ukraine, where critics at home and abroad have accused him of being too cautious. “The chancellor is firmly convinced that his sensible, balanced course in Ukrainian politics is the right course, which is also supported by a large part of the population,” his spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters on Monday.
3. FDP pays the price of power
In 2017, when FDP leader Christian Lindner withdrew from negotiations for a national coalition, he famously said that it was better not to rule than to govern badly. Those words are coming back to haunt Lindner now, because in the eyes of many FDP voters, bad governance is exactly what he is doing.
Lindner’s Liberals often performed well when they were not in government, and were punished by voters when they were part of a coalition. Most dramatically, they did not reach the Bundestag at all in 2013 after four years of ruling with the Christian Democrats under Angela Merkel.
The first three state elections, after entering the federal government this time, showed no signs of changing the picture.
In the Saar, they failed for the second time to exceed the 5 per cent threshold needed to enter the state parliament. In Schleswig-Holstein, they scored 6.4 percent, down 11.5 percent. In North Rhine-Westphalia, they fell from 12.6 percent in 2017 to 5.9 percent, without being able to profit again from being in the state government – unlike their larger coalition partner. To rub salt into the wound, this disaster happened in Lindner’s home state.
Liberal leaders worried before joining the national government that the FDP – a free market party fighting for tax cuts and fiscal correctness – would suffer from being part of a center-left coalition in Berlin. But they have no choice but to stick to it now, hoping to earn some points in the long run because they have stepped up to take responsibility.
“We must not forget: the traffic light coalition has never been our political dream,” Lindner said Monday. “We are running in the traffic light coalition out of a sense of responsibility to the country.
FDP leader Christian Lindner Thomas Niedermüller / Getty Images
He added, as if to reassure his partners: “Nothing has changed in this situation at the federal level.”
To try to make sure he and his party get something from the government, Lindner insisted he get the Treasury for himself and detailed assurances in the coalition agreement that the government would pursue a stable – conservative – fiscal policy.
It was only last week that he tried to reassure his base that he was committed to this course in the long run by presenting a new fiscal policy strategy – although the pile of debt he has accumulated during his first months in office is historically high. It was too late to save Sunday’s election – but a clear enough sign for the PSD and the Greens that Lindner would fight to leave his party’s mark on the government.
Lorenz Gerke contributed to the report.
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