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Elections in a small East German state with fewer people than Berlin may have marked the turning point in a year that will determine who succeeds Angela Merkel as leader of Europe’s largest economy.
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union won a memorable victory in Saxony-Anhalt Sunday, getting 37% of the vote: seven percentage points more than in the last state elections in 2016 and 16 points ahead of the second ranked right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The result was a big boost for Armin Laschet, CDU candidate for chancellor in the September Bundestag elections, which has been overshadowed in recent weeks by the popular Greens. But the ecological festival performed miserably in Saxony-Anhalt, with only 5.9%.
Many in the CDU claim that the result showed that the brilliance of the Greens is fading. “They have lost their magic,” said Christoph Ploss, leader of the CDU in Hamburg.
Saxony-Anhalt could mark the end of a dry period for the CDU. The party has been killed by one corruption scandal with the participation of some of its deputies, a bitter struggle between Laschet and Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder over who should run for center-right chancellery and public frustration with the slow start of the vaccination campaign against Covid-19.
Some in the party now expect the tide to have changed. The lifting of the coronavirus blockade for six months and the prospect of a normal summer vacation have improved the mood of voters, which translates into an increase in polls for the CDU and a rating of highest approval for Laschet.
Stimulated by Sunday’s result, some Christian Democrats are drawing parallels with a crucial moment in recent German political history: the dramatic derailing of the so-called “Schulz train” in 2017.
That year, the Social Democrats went to the polls and their leader, Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, seemed of course dismiss Merkel as chancellor in the autumn elections.
But the wheels came out of his campaign after two regional elections that garnered convincing victories for the CDU: Saarland in March and North Rhine-Westphalia in May. The SPD ended up winning 20.5% in the national elections, its worst post-war result.
Friedrich Merz, a prominent CDU politician, suggested that Green MP Annalena Baerbock enjoyed the media honeymoon after being named the Greens’ first candidate for chancellery in April. “This evening the Baerbock train derailed,” he wrote on Twitter Sunday evening.
“Baerbock was exaggerated in exactly the same way that Schulz did,” Ploss said. “But now it’s being measured by different standards. People are starting to think about what green government would mean and they realize that a lot of things are getting worse.”
Martin Schulz, former leader of the SPD: the potential fate of the Greens has been compared to that of his party, which shot at the polls before suffering a heavy electoral defeat in 2017 © Christoph Hardt / Geisler-Fotopres
Green candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock: support for her party is not just a “flash in the pan”, according to experts © Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Asked Monday whether he agreed with Schulz’s analogy, Laschet declined. “These comparisons to trains, I don’t make them myself,” he said. “[Baerbock] he is my main competitor and I take all the competitors seriously ”.
But, he added, the result of the Greens in Saxony-Anhalt could hardly be described as a “mega wave” induced by Baerbock, as the Greens landed in fifth place, behind the pro-business Free Democrats, traditionally one of the most small Bundestag.
Baerbock’s campaign was facing off strong head winds even before Sunday’s result. She was forced to apologize last month after admitting she had not reported any of her income from the Green Party leadership in parliament, as required, until this March. The Greens were also forced to make changes official curriculum after local media revealed inaccuracies. He said, for example, that he was a member of UNHCR when he had only supported an organization that raises money for the UN refugee agency.
However, experts say the comparison with Schulz is inadequate. “In 2017 the SPD bubble expanded and exploded in a few months,” said Robert Vehrkamp, a political scientist at the Bertelsmann Foundation, a think tank.
“The Greens have been voting hard for the last two years [to] for three years and have consistently fared well in the regional elections during this period. There are no flashes in the pan.
The CDUs should also resist drawing too many conclusions from the Saxony-Anhalt race, according to experts. The state, which was part of communist East Germany, represents only 3% of the country’s voting age population. It is also unusual to be a stronghold of the AfD, which gained 21% on Sunday. After polls suggested the right-wing party could win directly, many leftists tried to stop it by changing its allegiance to the CDU. This electoral behavior is unlikely to occur on a national scale.
Sunday’s voters are not a disaster for the Greens, analysts say. “His train did not jump [off] the rails, “said Vehrkampt.” But it is clear that it will be a much more rugged journey than they might have expected. ”
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