Both claim the Chancellery for themselves.
Germany experienced a historic election Sunday. The incumbent Angela Merkel did not run again after 16 years. That has never happened in the history of the Federal Republic. As a legacy, it leaves behind a completely different political landscape.
The people’s parties, Union and SPD, which imported 40 percent before the Merkel era, only reach a good quarter of the electorate each. Over 70 percent of Germans no longer voted for the respective chancellor party. Regardless of who wins the race for chancellorship, Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet would be quartered chancellors.
The two big parties have been exhausted in terms of content and personnel over the past twenty years. The old wisdom of Willy Brandt confidante Egon Bahr applies that grand coalitions are not good for democracy. The former popular parties are now experiencing this firsthand. Instead of profiling each other, problems were plastered up with large majority votes and even more state money.
In its most recent cover story, the “Economist” magazine attests that Germany is not only in chaos in terms of economic policy. Too much has been left behind. The Germans, who actually want stability, gave the parties a complex task on Sunday evening. The Chancellor candidates Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet each have to try to forge a three-way alliance.
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Another grand coalition is out of the question. Actually, such tripartite alliances certainly do not make governance any easier. But there is also the chance that the friction between three partners will generate warmth or even productive heat.
Scholz could become a tragic hero
The last few years of Merkel consisted mainly of moderating and cooling down topics. Some of the voters have plucked the parties violently, while others can hardly believe their luck. In the SPD, not a few feared the fate of the French socialists, who have slipped from a party that supported the state almost into insignificance.
The serious Hamburg-based Olaf Scholz always believed in his chance and almost stubbornly stuck to his plan to be the better Angela Merkel. The voters did it for him, but also thanks to the weakness of Armin Laschet and the break-in of the Green leader Annalena Baerbock.
Nevertheless, Scholz could become a tragic hero. There are enough forces in the Greens who would rather enter into a Jamaica government with the FDP and the Union. The strategists see this as an opportunity to replace the SPD as the largest leftist force in four years.
Because behind Scholz, the parliamentary group is dominated by the young socialist Kevin Kühnert. The two election winners Franziska Giffey in Berlin and Manuela Schwesig in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania stand for an SPD course that Olaf Scholz would like to take.
But in the south of the republic the Greens have long outstripped the Reds. There they rule with the CDU. They would have liked to have done that in Bavaria.
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The second historical moment of this election is the poor performance of the CDU and CSU party families. The Chancellor was also responsible for historically weak results. However, the fact that the black bar rushed into the cellar at 6 p.m. on Sunday triggered shock waves among those present in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus.
Berlin Senate has to answer for election chaos
The FDP with party leader Christian Lindner, on the other hand, is more in demand than ever. The negative ascriptions of market-radical, neoliberal or cold-hearted, are no longer even Kühnert in his mouth when he talks about the liberals. Scholz knows that for a successful chancellorship he has to win over the middle of society and there is the FDP and not the Left Party, which was punished at the ballot box.
Especially since the red-red-green Berlin Senate has to answer for an unprecedented election chaos. In some polling stations the ballot papers ran out. Laschet and Scholz now have to cast their bait. The SPD will try to make the FDP an offer that it cannot refuse.
Scholz advertises with trust and the promise to keep to agreements. He knows about the trauma of the FDP, which felt betrayed by Merkel. Laschet, in turn, has to convince the Greens that they are in better hands with him than with the Social Democrats.
His balancing act will be more difficult than Scholz’s. Laschet is only allowed to offer the Greens so much that the FDP does not give up. But it has to be so much that the Greens want to govern with him and the FDP. At the end of this historic day, the following applies: the curtain has fallen and all questions are open.
More: On election night we will finally see the real intentions. A comment.