Merkel’s party bombs important elections in Germany: what does that mean? — Only Got A Minute!

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For people who aren’t quite as obsessed by elections as I am, I appreciate it’s probably quite difficult to get fired up about the consequences of some regional elections in a couple of parts of Germany. But this year is what the Germans call a ‘super election year’, with regional elections leading up to the election to be chancellor in September. With the hugely influential Angela Merkel finally retiring after sixteen years, the vacancy for one of the world’s most powerful positions is becoming tantalisingly close. Anything that happens between now and then could be pivotal to who leads Europe’s biggest economy for the next four years. 

The two state ministers going into the state elections in Rheinland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg were already popular politicians: the first had the Social Democrat Malu Dreyer and the second had Winfried Kretschmann, the country’s only Green politician in a position of high political power. But the eyes of every political fanatic were on how Merkel’s conservative CDU party would do, only weeks after new party leader and potential Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet took the job. For a party used to ruling the roost for so long, to say they didn’t deliver is an understatement. 

Rheinland-Palatinate, once the former stomping ground of famed conservative chancellor Helmut Kohl, was supposed to be balanced on a knife-edge. The CDU candidate and local SPD (Social Democrats — the German equivalent of the British Labour Party) leader Dreyer were neck-and-neck right up to the end, and some polls had put the conservative candidate ahead. But on the night, the CDU imploded; they lost 4% on the last election, and ended up a full 8% behind the SPD on the night, who barely lost any of their vote share. Despite Dreyer being popular personally, this is quite the glimmer of hope for the SPD, who are currently well behind the conservatives and Greens nationally despite being supposedly the natural government alternative to the CDU historically. 

Down in the southwestern Baden-Württemberg, it was a great night for the first place Greens, who gained vote share in a state that is still very economically conservative. The CDU, who were trying to recover from their worst ever showing a state they’d ruled for sixty years, did even worse than last time, losing 3% on the last election and 8.5% behind on the Greens. As I’ll explain later, Green state leader Kretschmann isn’t your average Green politician, but the fact that there was seemingly nothing the CDU could do to claw back its old advantage sounds alarm bells for the big elections in September. 

But why do these smaller-bit elections matter to the new conservative leadership? Well, the Merkel-like Laschet wasn’t an exactly overwhelmingly popular choice in the party. Many people wanted Friedrich Merz, Merkel’s old arch-nemesis who wanted the party to go back to being more traditionally conservative. This would be an attempt to win back those who voted for the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In these campaigns, some thought it was unlikely they were going to win because a digital campaign didn’t reach anyone bar the diehard political watchers.

But the fact that they lost ground and the new leadership seemingly provided no breath of fresh air into the party at all suggests they’ve got a lot of things to think about. They also have to watch over the shoulders for Markus Söder: he’s the leader of the CSU, a conservative party that always works together with the CDU but only runs in Bavaria, where the CDU does not run. This arrangement is called ‘the Union’. Söder’s had such a ‘good’ crisis to the point where some of his early COVID approval ratings were at almost 100%. Even now, he’s the most preferred candidate of all parties, and that poses a problem for a CDU used to being the senior partner in the Union. 

It’s true we probably can’t just blame Laschet for not galvanising enough support. The CDU has been hit by a scandal in the national parliament where a CDU MP’s company made hundreds of thousands of euros profit on deals on face-masks during the pandemic. It probably didn’t help either that the MP came from Baden-Württemberg, even though the local leadership denounced him. The left-leaning news magazine Der Spiegel also pondered about general political indifference about a government that seemed like it had ran out of good ideas in a country that was kidding itself about how modern and innovative it was really was. Voter turnout yesterday was down in both states. Whatever it was that did it, the CDU now has some real decisions to make before it commits to a chancellor candidate for September’s election. Whatever it decides will have potentially huge consequences for Germany and beyond. 

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Even though we might say the SPD and the Greens ‘won’ the election by getting the biggest share of the vote, the German election system means it can be very tough for parties to be able to govern by themselves. The Greens in Baden-Württemberg were governing with the CDU as their junior partners (called a green-black coalition because of their parties’ colours). The SPD (red) in Rheinland-Palatinate governed in a ‘traffic light’ coalition, with the free-market liberalist FDP (yellow) and the Greens. Good results in both states for all these parties means that the ‘traffic light’ can continue if they want, and the Greens in Baden-Württemberg could potentially choose those parties there too, instead of the current ‘green-black’ partnership.

It is virtually certain that there will be a coalition government in Berlin in September. The CDU had been doing well in the polls since coronavirus started (at the beginning, some asked if a resurgent Angela Merkel wasn’t going to retire after all), but before then, the CDU and the Greens had only been separated by around 5%. Although the CDU are still way out in front right now, we’re still six months away from an election, and that could change if the COVID bounce wears off. 

Many still think it’s high likely the CDU will win, and the Greens will come second for them to make a majority government. They’d almost been partners in the last government with the liberal FDP (a so-called “Jamaica” coalition because they make the colours of the flag), but the FDP kiboshed that because of migration disagreements. We know they can govern together in Baden-Württemberg, but it may depend on who the CDU pick for chancellor on whether it works nationally. They’d be happy to go for Laschet, but if Merz somehow is picked, that’s always been a big red line for the Greens. Söder has purposefully courted the Greens to make his CSU leadership more modern. 

But if the CDU still ‘win’ but do as badly as the early 2020 polls suggest — with other parties doing better as a result — this could put the Greens in the driving seat. The CDU wouldn’t want to touch the hard-right AfD with a bargepole (they just got put on an intelligence watchlist for dangers against democracy before a court blocked it). Meanwhile, the Greens could have more friends with the SPD, the far-left ‘Linke’, and perhaps the FDP willing to make it work if the numbers are right. A Green chancellor — or even just as a strong junior partner to the CDU — could potentially be a radical change for Germany and other countries, as well. 

There are the obvious environmental causes that the Greens would champion; the controversial gas pipeline the CDU is building with Russia would come into question, and the Greens want to drastically increase spending on public transport.

Another big change for the government could be on foreign policy. The Greens are much more sceptical about militarising Europe, and that could make attempts to make Europe more militarily independent from the United States trickier. Germany already had a bit of a reputation for not pulling its weight in defending the continent. However, the fact that they consider themselves more ‘values’-driven could make them ally more closely with the US on issues such as China, where America has taken a much firmer stance than the EU has.

Their firmer line on regulations and values doesn’t mean that they consider themselves the ‘prohibition party’ they used to get stick for; pragmatics in the party have been working hard to make the Greens more centrist and electable, broadly supporting the Western defence alliance NATO (up to a point) and the German brand of capitalism to catch middle-class voters. 

And what about for the UK? Brexit is done in terms of the agreement, and it was Merkel’s pragmatism that continually kept the negotiations from going under. But the UK will always have to deal with the EU, and the EU is often led by its biggest economy, Germany. If Laschet ends up chancellor, his particularly soft stance on EU integration and cooperation with France might make him less likely to cooperate with a Britain firmly set on using the control it took back. The Greens are similarly as invested in the European project, particularly when it comes to crisis solidarity. 

The unknown quantity is Söder; despite his long leadership experience, he hasn’t really been known for his foreign policy expertise. However, some think he could be someone to stir the pot a bit, particularly when it comes to Brussels. If Söder finds something that suits his leadership to do so, the UK could find there’s an unlikely Bavarian bedfellow in the German chancellor’s office. 

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It may have come as a surprise to you that the Greens are at the head of an entire state government, as well as having polled second nationally for over a year. In comparison, the UK only has one Green MP and five MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. It came as a surprise to the German Greens, too. They suddenly became the second biggest party in Baden-Württemberg in 2011, right as the Fukushima disaster was turning Germans away from nuclear power. When the CDU, who had been governing there for almost 60 years, couldn’t make a coalition, the Greens led it with the SPD. In 2016, they became the largest party overall in the region, leading with the CDU as junior partners. 

A lot of this is down to the personal popularity of the Green state minister, Winfried Kretschmann. In a formerly dye-in-the-wool CDU state, the fact that Kretschmann is happy to call himself ‘conservative’ on things such as the economy means he’s able to appeal to all kinds of voters. This is particularly important in a state home to Mercedes and Porsche, two massive German car companies. A fusion of ecological awareness and a preference for capitalist solutions to economic problems also demonstrate that the Greens have a potentially winning platform on the national stage too. But not all Greens are happy with him. For some, he’s the black sheep of the Green family, coming out with ideas that many of the Green’s capitalism-sceptic, anti-fossil fuel base find difficult to stomach. Being able to replicate Kretschmann’s local success further afield may prove tricky if the base aren’t as enthusiastic about capitalism as he is. 

But one final thing stood out to me when I was researching this piece. Both Dreyer and Kretschmann both stood on platforms that made the election very much about themselves, and not about the parties they represented — a strategy to capitalise on their own personal popularity. The SPD brand is down as its popularity has plummeted, and the Green brand might give more conservative voters the wrong idea. Both, particularly Kretschmann, have been cast as those good at governing in the Merkel style of consensus: a “Merkelism without Merkel” and, importantly, without the CDU. Voters seemed to care little about the squabbles and even scandals inside the parties; instead, it seemed they wanted leaders that were able to govern effectively and had the track record to prove it. 

So what does this mean for a Merkelless CDU? Even though Laschet comes from the Merkel mould of consensus, that’s no guarantee to making a good leader: just ask Merkel’s original post-retirement protégée Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, whose leadership fell well short of expectations. But would voters want the more combative and traditional Merz in his place? My money, for what it’s worth, seems to be on Söder: a leader with flatteringly high approval ratings, a record of good governance when it came to COVID, and a newfound reputation for likeability. Anyone who thought the race to the Chancellor’s office was over when Laschet got elected as party leader better buckle back up.