Berlin According to the first forecasts, the SPD has become the strongest force in the state elections in Bremen. The Social Democrats under incumbent Andreas Bovenschulte, 57, were at 6 p.m. at 29.5 percent (plus 4.6 percent).
The second strongest force was the CDU (25.5 percent, minus 1.2), which, according to the forecasts, with challenger Frank Imhoff is only slightly below their pre-election result. The FDP is 5.5 percent (minus 0.4 percent) and will probably move back into the citizenship.
The left reached 10.5 percent (down 0.8 percent) and the angry citizens got 10.5 percent (up 8.1 percent). The AfD was not allowed to vote due to formal errors.
Bovenschulte governs in Bremen in a red-red-green coalition, for which there is still a majority – despite significant losses for the Greens, who end up at 12.5 percent. In 2019 it was 17.4 percent. Traditionally, the party is rather strong in Germany’s smallest federal state and has consistently been involved in the state government in alliance with the SPD since 2007.
Due to the complicated Bremen electoral system, the provisional official final result is not expected until Wednesday. Bremen and Bremerhaven are considered separate elective areas, each with its own five percent hurdle. A party that jumps the hurdle in an electoral area is represented in the citizenship.
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After a series of state election successes, the result is unlikely to satisfy the Federal Greens either. After all, it wasn’t just Bremen-specific issues that brought citizens to the ballot box on Sunday.
The Greens are criticized both for the debates about the controversial draft law on switching to heating with non-fossil energy and for recent allegations of alleged nepotism in Robert Habeck’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The Bremen election should keep the Greens busy for the next few days
This is also reflected in the polls of Habeck, who is more unpopular than ever during his tenure. Only 30 percent were satisfied with the minister’s work in the “ARD Deutschlandtrend”. In January it was still 44 percent – and Habeck behind Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (also Greens) the second most popular politician in the republic.
The heat pump was the “most common topic” at the election campaign stands, said the Greens’ top candidate and Senator for Transport, Maike Schaefer, 51. before the election. The doctor of biology is also the deputy of Mayor Bovenschulte. But she also made herself unpopular in the election campaign – among other things with unfortunate transport policy decisions. Most recently, she abolished the so-called roll button, which allowed drivers to park for 20 minutes in the city center free of charge.
Maike Schaefer is currently Senator for the Environment, Transport and Building Department.
(Photo: dpa)
Despite these Bremen-specific issues, the election result should also concern the Greens leadership in the federal government in the coming days and weeks. The party is threatened with a fierce debate about mistakes in recent weeks, which should also further burden the traffic light coalition in the federal government.
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In the run-up to the election, Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke spoke of her party’s communication mistakes in climate protection policy. When asked about the drop in poll numbers for the Greens, she told the “Bild am Sonntag” that you can feel the climate protection measures in everyday life. At the same time, she conceded that this was also the phase “where we as Greens didn’t immediately hit the right note and should have explained more and better”.
According to the political scientist Thomas Poguntke, the Greens in Bremen have “shrunk to their core electorate”. The party must now draw the right conclusions and allow criticism. “Apparently voters are punished for setting maximum targets, although their implementation is questionable,” he told the Handelsblatt.
Pragmatism helped the SPD
He cited the heating law as an example. “Too expensive, no skilled workers, open financing – these criticisms from associations initially fell on deaf ears with the Greens,” he said. “That probably has something to do with the fact that politics is essentially made by networks from our own environment.”
The party must therefore be open to other opinions and other interests. “It has to slow down climate policy projects and communicate better,” says Poguntke. Climate protection without the support of the population cannot last long.
>> Read more: Greens under pressure: Bremen election becomes a mood test for the party
The fact that the SPD has recently positioned itself more pragmatically than the Greens on these issues could have helped it in the election on Sunday. The result should be seen as confirmation in the Chancellery – especially since the Social Democrats still have to cope with the crash in the state elections in Berlin.
The FDP also looked spellbound to Bremen. The Liberals have had a series of defeats in the federal states since the 2021 federal elections: twice kicked out of parliament, once missing entry, twice losing a lot of votes. This has greatly stimulated the mood in the Berlin traffic light coalition.
Because as a result, the Free Democrats looked more and more for profiling and differentiation from their coalition partners in the federal government, first in the dispute over the shutdown of the last nuclear power plants, then in transport and also in budget and tax policy.
The top candidates in the election in Bremen
A tight race between incumbent Bovenschulte and his CDU challenger Imhoff was expected in advance. Bovenschulte has been the mayor and president of the Senate in Bremen for four years.
After an SPD election defeat in 2019, he left the coalition negotiations with the Greens and Left Party to his predecessor, Carsten Sieling, and then took over the top office. The doctor of law, born in Hildesheim in 1965, was also chairman of the SPD in Bremen from 2010 to 2013; he is considered a party leftist.
During the election campaign, he emphasized above all his office bonus as mayor. The CDU, in turn, held the SPD against the poor situation in Bremen’s schools, which often lag behind in educational comparisons.
Challenger Imhoff is an exception in the Hanseatic city with its tradition of seafarers and merchants. The 54-year-old is a trained farmer and runs a farm with his family in the fifth generation.
He has been a member of the Bremen Parliament since 1999. He was Vice President there and in 2019 became the first representative of the CDU to take over the office of President. Imhoff advocated a CDU as a modern big city party that takes care of education, integration and climate protection.
A special feature of the Bremen election was that the AfD had blocked participation with internal disputes. However, the polls of the right-wing populist voters’ association Bürger in Wut (BiW) have risen. In the run-up to the elections, the opinion research institute Forsa analyzed that many AfD voters wanted to vote for BiW.
In Bremen and Bremerhaven, more than 450,000 voters were called upon to re-elect the state parliament, the Bremen Parliament. During the election campaign, the two-city state focused very much on itself.
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The country is full of contradictions. The ports, the world’s second largest Mercedes factory and companies from the aerospace industry make Bremen a strong business location. At the same time, unemployment is high and many people are dependent on social assistance. The Bremen school system usually occupies the bottom places in studies. And the country is in deep debt.
The people of Bremen would like to see improvements – this is also shown by surveys. But in the fundamentally left-wing country, it is difficult to foresee which power constellation could try something new.
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