SPP and Weil with a clear victory

The CDU with its top candidate Bernd Althusmann lost votes. In 2017 she got 33.6 percent of the votes.

The Greens increased to 14 percent, but had hoped for more than 20 percent in the summer. Nevertheless, the top candidates Julia Willie Hamburg and Christian Meyer can be happy about a historically good result. In 2017, the Greens performed significantly weaker at 8.7 percent.

The FDP, on the other hand, had to worry about returning to the Lower Saxony state parliament on Sunday evening. It is currently five percent. In the last elections in 2017, she got 7.5 percent of the votes.

This makes it increasingly obvious to the FDP that the traffic light coalition in the federal government is doing more harm than good. In the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in May, the Liberals got just 5.9 percent of the votes, in Schleswig-Holstein 6.4 percent. In both countries, the FDP was kicked out of the state government.

The left has probably missed entering the Lower Saxony state parliament, the AfD can book a double-digit result (11.6 percent). Dissatisfaction and fears about the future are apparently driving many voters to the right-wing party.

CDU misses punishment from the federal government

For the Berlin traffic light government, the election in Lower Saxony was an important mood test. The SPD went into election day as the favorite ahead of the CDU. Until the very end, they hoped to be able to overtake their coalition partner, the SPD. CDU leader Friedrich Merz was involved in the election campaign. The party hoped to capitalize on voter dissatisfaction with the Berlin traffic light alliance.

The Lower Saxony election campaign was less influenced by local issues than by federal politics. The hot topic was energy policy and the drastic rise in energy prices. The CDU in particular had therefore declared the election to be a vote on the crisis policy of the traffic light coalition in the federal government.

With the result this Sunday, the SPD, but also the Greens, should feel confirmed in their course in the Ukraine and energy crisis. Lower Saxony remains in the hands of the SPD and the current and probably future 63-year-old Prime Minister Weil should be able to expand his nationwide influence with his renewed victory – possibly in an alliance with the Greens. Weil had already led such an alliance between 2013 and 2017.

The Greens had also sought an alliance with the SPD. This brings a coalition back into focus that had not been mathematically possible for years. The state Greens should be satisfied with the result, even if they were significantly stronger in the meantime in polls.

In the final sprint to the election campaign, the FDP had also opted for a traffic light alliance in Lower Saxony. Their argument: only one vote for the Liberals could prevent a red-green coalition. The party tried to attract undecided voters from the CDU.

For the Liberals, Lower Saxony is traditionally a state where everything and nothing is possible. In the 1990s, they twice failed to get into the state parliament, and later, from 2003, they governed for ten years in a coalition with the CDU. In 2013, the FDP achieved its best ever result with 9.9 percent, but was kicked out of the state government anyway.

However, campaigning for a traffic light alliance in Lower Saxony was not easy because the Greens and FDP fought a tough election campaign against each other. FDP top candidate Stefan Birkner called for the nuclear power plant in Lingen, Lower Saxony, to be left on the grid for longer – contrary to what the Green Federal Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck, is planning. The Lower Saxony Greens are considered to be particularly bitter opponents of nuclear power. After all, the party fought here for decades against the Gorleben repository.

Weil and the SPD, on the other hand, had largely stayed out of the nuclear dispute between the FDP and the Greens. During the election campaign, the Social Democrats relied entirely on the Prime Minister’s office bonus and also advertised the relief measures in the energy crisis, which were announced at the same time by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).

Nuclear dispute divides the federal government

It is questionable how the Lower Saxony elections will influence future cooperation between the traffic light coalition partners in Berlin. The election campaign has also made it clear at the federal level how far apart the Greens and the FDP are in energy policy.

The Liberals accuse Habeck and the Greens of being ideologically obstinate on the nuclear issue. In the past few days, they have continued to increase the pressure on the Greens. They demand that the two nuclear power plants that have already been shut down should also be reconnected to the grid should the energy crisis make this necessary.

At the meeting of the federal cabinet last Wednesday, the dispute over the extension of nuclear power reached its peak. Habeck was unable to present his law, which is intended to enable the continued operation of two southern German nuclear power plants until April 2023, because the plans did not go far enough for the liberals. The Greens, on the other hand, are now threatening to shut down all three remaining nuclear power plants at the end of the year, as originally planned.

At the end of the week, the Greens will face another important mood test for their federal political course: their federal party conference will take place in Bonn from Friday to Sunday, at which tough discussions on the topics of nuclear and coal power can be expected.

At the latest after the party congress, the federal government must then find a common line on the nuclear issue. So far there is no indication that the FDP or the Greens are moving away from their position. Many in the traffic light alliance therefore expect a word of power from Chancellor Scholz.