Clear victory for the SPD, record result for the Greens, but the election in Lower Saxony ends bitterly for the third of the Berlin traffic light partners: The FDP is thrown out of the state parliament there, and in Berlin the coalition peace is now in danger.
“My party still has major problems with this coalition,” said FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai on ARD. Specifically, he called the dispute over the debt brake. “And we have to talk about that – tomorrow in the committees of the FDP and also in the traffic light coalition. We have to talk about the fact that it doesn’t work that way.”
The traffic light partners SPD and Greens, on the other hand, can be satisfied: According to the provisional official result, the Social Democrats of Prime Minister Stephan Weil emerge as the winners of the election despite losses; the Greens increased significantly – the signs are red-green.
The Greens chairman Omid Nouripour appealed to the traffic light coalition partners to show unity to the outside world: “The bottom line is that the cooperation is good – despite all the differences that we have. That’s why I assume that the responsibility that the traffic light coalition has taken on, which is really tremendous in these times, now continues to be embraced by all – by all sides to the best of our knowledge and belief.”
The AfD also made strong gains in the state elections and achieved a double-digit result. The left failed again at the five percent hurdle.
The final result
According to the preliminary result, the SPD received 33.4 percent of the votes (2017: 36.9). At 28.1 percent, the CDU posted its worst state result in more than 60 years (2017: 33.6). The Greens, on the other hand, are making significant gains and are in third place with 14.5 percent (2017: 8.7). The AfD is also gaining ground, reaching 10.9 percent (2017: 6.2). After some tremors, the FDP failed with 4.7 percent at the five percent hurdle and did not make it into the state parliament (2017: 7.5), as did the left again with 2.7 percent (2017: 4.6) .
This means that the SPD with 57 and the Greens with 24 seats together have an absolute majority. The CDU has 47 seats, followed by the AfD with 18 seats.
Voter turnout was 60.3 percent. In 2017 it was still 63.1 percent, after 59.4 percent in 2013.
Fall of the FDP
After the election disaster of the FDP, the tone of the federal liberals became rougher in the evening. A coalition will not work “if two partners are constantly developing ideas on how to spend even more money and even more money and others have to constantly deal with the question of how to organize and finance the whole thing,” said Secretary General Djir-Sarai.
Party Deputy Wolfgang Kubicki demanded that the FDP must “mark their positions more clearly” than before in the traffic lights. There are no reasonable answers to central challenges in the crisis. “We’ll have to work on that, or this traffic light will get into rough water.”
For the Free Democrats, it is the third state election this year with significant losses. In North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein, however, it was enough for the party to at least enter the state parliament. In the Saarland elections in the spring, the party received a little more approval, but narrowly missed entering the state parliament.
Red-green in sight
Prime Minister Weil announced a return to a red-green coalition in Lower Saxony that evening. “If I have the chance, I would like to form a red-green state government,” said the SPD’s top candidate on the Phoenix television station. The 63-year-old, who has been head of government for almost ten years, would be starting his third term in office.
Greens leader Ricarda Lang now expects a government participation after her party’s gains. “From my point of view, it is an order that we also take responsibility in Lower Saxony,” she said.
CDU and AFD in opposition
CDU leader Friedrich Merz really wanted success in Lower Saxony. He made a good dozen campaign appearances there in the last week before the election alone. But the CDU drove their worst Lower Saxony result in decades. Country chief Bernd Althusmann announced on Sunday evening that he would resign from office.
The head of the Junge Union, Tilman Kuban, also criticized substantive weaknesses in the CDU at the federal level. “We can’t always just ask the Greens to let nuclear power plants run longer,” he told the editorial network Germany (RND).
The AfD has won for the first time after three state elections with losses. That should be grist to the mills of the protest movement that the right-wing party wants to set up this fall. There was a foretaste on Saturday in Berlin, when several thousand people demonstrated in front of the Reichstag building against the federal government’s crisis policy, many of them with AfD flags. “We’re back,” said AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla.
For the Left, a disastrous election year ends in another disaster. As in the other three previous elections, it remains well below the five percent mark. The already existential crisis of the party is likely to exacerbate this a little further.
