The candidate of the Social Democrats Olaf Scholz is “the one who has the best chance of becoming chancellor”: it is important that the CDU and Csu “respect the outcome of the vote” and do not force the outcome of the polls. Markus Söder, minister president of Bavaria and leader of the CSU, the sister party of the CDU, commented on the vote on September 26 and the race for the chancellery that opened between Scholz himself and the leader of the Christian-democratic union, Armin Laschet. The statements by Söder, already in the running as a candidate of the CDU-Csu axis for the elections of 2021, sound like a lash at Laschet himself, increasingly in the balance after the thud of the last elections and the further collapse of popularity among the ranks of the party.
The CDU-CSU, added Söder, cannot create from nothing “a success that was denied by the polls” and would not be matched by the poor performance of the main national center-right force. Under Laschet’s leadership, the CDU-CSU axis stopped at 24.1% of the consensus, a collapse of almost 10% compared to 33% in 2018 (when however, she lost 8% of the consensus, forcing Merkel herself in negotiations that would have allowed her to take office months after the polls).
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The negotiations for Scholz’s coalition and Laschet’s attempts
Söder’s speech, on the strength of a popularity that has only grown with the Covid pandemic, comes two days after the electoral defeat of the CDU-CSU. The Bavarian minister president speaks of a “heavy defeat”, in fact opposing Laschet’s ambitions to try in any case at the start of an alternative coalition to that of Scholz. The Social Democratic candidate, 25.7% strong by the SPD at the polls, already wants to start negotiations with the Greens (14,% of the votes) and the Liberals (10.5%) for a “traffic light” majority that today is considered probable and is watched without concern by international investors. Greens and Liberals are already in the midst of the first bilaterals between them and will broaden the confrontation to the SPD and to the potential new chancellor, Scholz himself. Laschet never denied the electoral flop but kept alive the scenario of a “Jamaica” coalition between the CDU, the Greens and the Liberals, despite the awareness of presenting himself at the table as runner-up in the national vote. The combination could hold up in numbers, but even within the Cdu-Csu circles there are those who consider it a stretch with respect to the outcome of the polls. The German press suggests that Merkel’s successor may already be at an end.