BERLIN – Masters of electoral squint, the Germans voted in two important regions with one eye on Berlin and the other on their lands. In Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland Palatinate nearly eleven million voters have punished the CDU for the “mask scandal” and for the disaster of the vaccination campaign and have rewarded the outgoing governors, the green Winfried Kretschmann and the social democrat Malu Dreyer. According to the first projections, the former received 31% of the votes, one point more than five years ago. The CDU has collapsed – in a land where it ruled for many decades and which was considered a stronghold of Christian Democrats before the ‘green’ shift – to 23%, four points below 2016.
The crisis of the CDU: Merkel is already a regret
by Tonia Mastrobuoni
Also in Baden-Wuerttemberg, the SPD drops by two points to 10%, as does the ultra-right Afd, which drops by three points to 12%. The consensus for the Fdp liberals has improved, reaching 11%, three points above 2016. The party that, without the AFD’s negationist excesses, has often expressed criticism of the anti-Covid restrictions of the Merkel government, also gains voters in Rhineland-Platinate: 6.5% against 6.2% five years ago.
Very bitter defeat of the CDU even in Rhineland-Palatinate, the region of Helmut Kohl: in recent weeks, up to the “mask scandal”, it had even managed to surpass the SPD in some polls. Now it drops from 31.8% five years ago to 25% and collects the worst defeat in history, while the Spd of the outgoing governor drops by three points but still collects 33% Here too the Greens collect an excellent result: they go from 5 , 3% to 9.5, almost double. Linke has not reached the threshold of 5% in either of the two lands, but in Rhineland-Palatinate the conservative “Freie Waehler” may have won seats in the regional parliament.
The debacle of the CDU could become even more burning if in Baden-Wuerttemberg the governor Kretschmer were to say goodbye to the black-green coalition for a “traffic light” alliance with the SPD and the FDP. If they were thrown out of the Stuttgart government, from the powerful industrial and very rich region of southwestern Germany, for the president of the CDU, Armin Laschet, the horizon of the post-Merkel candidacy could be darkened.
Kretschmann left both options open: a re-edition of the conservative coalition and gruenen which for years was considered a vanguard even for a future federal government, but did not say no to an alternative with SPD and liberals. Few surprises are expected in Rhineland-Palatinate: a continuation of the current “traffic light” alliance is likely.
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