Berlin The SPD won the election in Lower Saxony, defying the lousy poll numbers in the federal government. Nevertheless, turbulent times are coming to the traffic lights in the federal government after the fall of the FDP – the Liberals just missed the five percent hurdle on Sunday evening. These and five other lessons from the state elections in Lower Saxony:
Up until the state elections in Saarland in May, the incumbent had won 13 state elections in a row – until Saar Prime Minister Tobias Hans (CDU) clearly lost the election. But the Saarland only showed that exceptions prove the rule. Like almost all of his fellow Prime Ministers before him, Stephan Weil also benefited from his office bonus in the Lower Saxony elections.
Weil’s candidate factor has doubled from 19 to 38 percent since 2013. 38 percent of SPD voters made their cross mainly because of Weil with the Social Democrats. Because was also the reason why the result in Lower Saxony was completely against the national trend. While the SPD has fallen below 20 percent in federal polls, it still came in at more than 33 percent in Lower Saxony despite slight losses. So the SPD won the election thanks to Weil – and despite the poor poll numbers of SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
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2. Crash of the CDU: The weakness of the mainstream parties continues
The CDU just got 28.1 percent in the Lower Saxony election. That was the party’s worst performance in the largest northern German state since 1955. After NRW, the Lower Saxony election was further evidence: the old people’s parties can no longer be sure of their old strongholds. Just as the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia had the worst election result in its history in May, the CDU in Lower Saxony was crushed.
The Lower Saxony election made the Union’s weakness clear.
(Photo: dpa)
On the one hand, the poor performance was due to the pale CDU top candidate Althusmann, who announced his resignation as CDU state leader on the evening of the election. But the statements by CDU leader Friedrich Merz that Ukrainians would commute between Ukraine and Germany to collect social benefits and engage in “social tourism” may have irritated conservative voters in Lower Saxony.
3. Red-Green lives – despite Green weakness
In the summer, the Greens could still hope for a great election result in Lower Saxony. The eco party was 20 percent, the Union seemed within reach. But once again, as is so often the case, the Greens lost a lot of feathers in the course of an election campaign.
More on the state elections in Lower Saxony
Nevertheless, the election result can also give the Greens hope, because it shows: Red-Green is alive. At least in Lower Saxony. For the first time in almost a decade, there was a majority for red-green in a non-city state. The last time it was enough for a red-green majority in 2013 – in Lower Saxony. And the Lower Saxony elections not only brought red-green back onto the political map of the republic, they also erased another alliance: with the election, the last grand coalition of SPD and CDU in the republic was voted out.
4. The FDP is the election loser
The FDP is clearly the big loser in the Lower Saxony elections. While she got almost ten percent in the 2013 election, the preliminary result shows that it is not enough for a seat in the state parliament.
The 2022 election year had already been a used one for the FDP up until the Lower Saxony elections. The FDP also lost the elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, in both countries it was kicked out of the government, in Saarland the party fell just short of the five percent hurdle. In Lower Saxony now threatens the Gau.
FDP leader Christian Lindner sees the reason for this in the formation of the traffic light coalition in the federal government. “We are certainly paying a price for our political profile, because some then do not recognize the FDP as a liberal force and believe that we are now also a left-wing party and no longer in the centre.”
But an intra-party debate could also break out about Lindner’s course. This year, for example, the Federal Minister of Finance is taking on 500 billion euros in debt, bypassing the debt brake, not exactly a sign of liberal financial policy. But there are also voices that say the FDP should have taken the lead in the rescue package. One way or another: The election disaster will once again increase the pressure on the FDP and its party leader, Lindner.
5. The energy crisis strengthens the right fringe
Leftists like AfD have announced a “hot autumn”, but only one of the two parties was able to benefit from the energy crisis. Concerns about the sharp rise in energy prices have driven significantly more voters in Lower Saxony into the arms of the right-wing populists. The party only got 6.2 percent in 2017, but has now almost doubled its result to eleven percent. “The formula that the AfD is drifting into the political sidelines as a result of its nationwide radicalization is not correct,” says populism researcher Marcel Lewandowsky. Your electorate is not only loyal, the AfD is even becoming “more compatible”.
The energy crisis has strengthened the right fringe.
(Photo: dpa)
The left, on the other hand, missed entry into the state parliament for the third time in a row and only got around 2.5 percent. That should exacerbate the existential crisis of the hopelessly divided party.
6th traffic light before troubled times
Anyone who spoke to representatives of the traffic light coalition in Berlin before the elections heard again and again: If no one had to take the elections in Lower Saxony into consideration, the willingness to compromise would increase again in the federal government. Most recently, the federal and state governments had not been able to agree on a third relief package, and the traffic light was also hopelessly at odds.
Certainly the Union, whose prime ministers can exercise considerable influence through the Bundesrat, is likely to be more willing to compromise after the election. However, the centrifugal forces within the traffic lights are likely to increase due to the fall of the FDP.
The liberal party will ask itself even more loudly whether the coalition with the SPD and the Greens will damage its own profile too much – and even endanger the re-entry into the Bundestag in 2025.
The Liberals are now faced with the difficult task of raising their profile against two left-wing parties in government responsibility. FDP leader Lindner has tried this recently, for example in energy policy or when insisting on complying with the debt brake next year, but so far without success.
Although he has record debts as Federal Minister of Finance this year, he has been attacked by the SPD and the Greens as a brakeman and financial policy ideologue. At the same time, it seems to potential liberal voters that Lindner is taking a left-wing course by FDP standards. On the evening of the election, FDP politicians were already asked whether it wouldn’t be better if the Liberals took the same position as the SPD and the Greens, separating the party chairmanship and government offices.
But not the weak performance of the FDP, but also the strong performance of the AfD puts the traffic light under pressure. Admittedly, there will be no elections in the east next year, where the AfD is currently the strongest force according to polls. But next year there will be elections in Bremen, Bavaria and Hesse. Lower Saxony has shown that the AfD can also achieve double-digit results in the west. And the energy crisis has only just begun. The traffic light will therefore have to find good solutions to the energy crisis quickly.
More: Clear victory for Weil and the SPD – FDP fails at five percent hurdle