Within a week, two German states held regional elections. One was the most populous in the country, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, while the other was the strategic state of Schleswig-Holstein. Analyzing the results of the elections, one can see the constant rise of the German greens, while the war in Ukraine may have affected the performance of the nationalist right.
First, on May 8, it was the turn of Schleswig-Holstein voters. Elections for state parliaments, the Landtag, are similar to elections for the federal parliament, the Bundestag. First, in the sense that Germany does not adopt a pure district system, but mixed proportional representation, precisely to count expressive votes of candidates who lost in their districts.
Each voter votes in two elections. In one, he votes for his district candidate. In the other, in your favorite party, in a proportional list. Elections are also similar in the sense that a governor is not elected as in Brazil, but a parliament is elected that, internally, forms a government coalition to determine the minister-president, in a similar way to the process of choosing the federal chancellor.
Schleswig-Holstein
In the northern state are chosen 69 ) parliamentarians and 60, 4% of voters attended. Two state results are notable, but first the numbers. In first place was the conservative Christian Democratic Union, with 43% of the votes and 60 seats, increasing its bench by nine deputies, with an increase of 11% of the electorate. The party was the biggest winner of the elections both in absolute numbers and in relative growth.
The Greens were in second place, with 14 seats and 18, 3% of the votes, an increase of more than 5%. In third place was the Social Democrat, SPD, which currently governs the country, with only 14% of the votes, losing % of the electorate and nine seats, leaving only twelve. The Liberals also dwindled and were left with only 6.4% of the vote, with a final five seats.
The first notable result is precisely the fifth place in the election, the Voters’ Association of Southern Schleswig, with 5.7% of the vote and four seats. Known by the German acronym SSW, the party represents the Danish and Frisian minority of the region, which was held by Denmark until 1864, when Prussia and Austria won the Second War of the Duchies.
Because it is a minority party, SSW does not need to pass the 5% barrier clause to be in the Landtag, but it managed to this result for the first time since post-World War II, in its best electoral result. Who was in the state parliament but did not comply with the barrier clause was the Alternative for Germany, the AfD, of the nationalist right.
War in Ukraine
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The AfD got only 4.4% of the votes and, therefore, will not be in the Landtag, where it had five deputies. The party’s defeat is at least partially connected to the conflict in Ukraine, as the AfD has many public ties to Vladimir Putin’s Russian government, including receiving funds. The invasion of Ukraine by Russian aggression affected the party’s image before part of the German public.
The war also eroded the image of the federal government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a social democrat, charged for not doing enough to decrease the consumption of energy supplied by Russia and increase military aid to the Ukrainians. That is, the war also affected the vote for the SPD and strengthened the other major German party, the CDU. As a result, the CDU needs only one more seat to govern the state.
For this, the CDU can form simple coalitions with the smaller parties in the Landtag, such as the Liberals or the SSW, which will not charge too high a price for their support, while the Greens will play a leading role as state opposition leaders. The same wear and tear of the SPD and the AfD can be seen in the other regional election, on May 15 North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in the country.
North Rhine-Westphalia
Electoral turnout was only 55%, the lowest since German reunification. CDU also took first place, with 35, 7% of the votes and 98 of the 195 seats of the Landtag, an increase of four deputies. The Social Democrats came in second, with 43 seats and 35 , 7% of the votes, losing thirteen seats. In third place was the big winner of the elections, the Greens.
Our readers have known for a long time that the Green Party is constantly achieving good regional results in Germany, anticipating the possibility, which came true, that the Greens would be essential for the formation of a federal coalition. In the election of the last day 15 they won 18% of votes and 43 seats, growing 195 ,8% and conquering 25 more seats than before, the biggest growth of the election.
Liberals were the biggest losers, with only 12 seats and 5.9% of the votes, losing 18 seats. Closes the regional parliament to the AfD, with twelve seats and 5.4% of the votes, with four deputies less. The state will likely go through more complicated negotiations to form a government, with three possible coalitions. First, the “Grand Coalition” of the two largest parties, the CDU and the Social Democrats.
The two parties, together, would have 132 seats , well beyond the 98 needed by most. Another possibility is a CDU-Green coalition, which already governs two other German states, in Baden-Württemberg and Hesse, in addition to being part of triple coalitions in two others, Brandenburg and Saxony. This possibility is currently the strongest in the state.
Finally, if the CDU fails to form a government coalition, the task can be passed to the second party, the Social Democrats. In this case, the “Traffic Signal Coalition” could be repeated, the same one that governs the country, among the Social Democrats, Reds, Liberals, Yellows, and the Greens. This, however, is the most distant possibility at the moment.
The two recent elections are two more examples of the constant growth of the German Green party, which today has the largest federal bench in its history. It is also the largest caucus in one state and one of the three largest in another nine, consolidating a position of third party force in Germany. Since it was coveted by the Alternative for Germany, today increasingly weakened.
