The Greens have failed on their own test. Earlier this year, the Bundesspitze repeatedly pointed out that the state elections in the East should not be underestimated. Since the party congress last year, the Greens have been working continuously towards these elections.
They started calling themselves "Alliance 90 / The Greens" again. They held all major party events, such as retreats and party congresses in the East. They admitted that the Greens had not been interested in the East for too long. They attached special importance to these elections.
Now it's over, and the Greens could not live up to their own claims. Their goal was to double digit in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia. They did it in Brandenburg, where they landed at 10.8 percent. In Saxony they came only to 8.6 percent and by far the worst they did in Thuringia: They reached, according to preliminary final score 5.2 percent. They have lost 0.5 percentage points, with increased turnout. The Greens have failed to show that they can score well beyond urban centers and wealthy lands.
For the Greens, the result is also bitter because they have co-governed in Thuringia. They were part of the first red-red-green government. The alliance was voted out that evening, albeit scarcely.
State election Thuringia 2019
Preliminary final result
Second vote result
Shares in percent
CDU
21.8
-11.7
The left
31
+2.8
SPD
8.2
-4.2
AFD
23.4
+12.8
green
5.2
-0.5
FDP
5
+2.5
other
5.4
-1.7
allocation of seats
Total: 90
Majority: 46 seats
29
8th
5
5
21
22
The Left (29)
SPD (8)
Green (5)
FDP (5)
CDU (21)
AfD (22)
Source: Provincial Returning Officer
Results in detail
The election party of the Greens in the evening in Berlin is surprisingly well attended. This is mainly due to the fact that they have organized a new members meeting in the "Hotel Adina" directly opposite the Federal Office just before the announcement of the election results. The newcomers fill the room in Berlin, so the party ensures that the cameras do not have to film an empty hall.
At 6 pm, as the first forecasts flicker across the screen, the new Greens are quite calm. They do not really know how to react to this bad result. Anton Hofreiter is the only green politician in front of the big TV. He makes no move, takes a sip of his "biotic blood orange", shrugs. What should he say to that? "You can not derive anything general from the result," he answers when asked.
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The election evening in Thuringia: a bit of cheers and a lot of helplessnessGreens boss Annalena Baerbock and federal managing director Michael Kellner come only after 18 o'clock in the room. Baerbock stands behind the microphones. The result is that none of the democratic parties can be satisfied, even for them it is disappointing. "We have not managed to penetrate the breadth of society in Thuringia and we have not been able to penetrate structurally weak regions," she says.
"We do not want Germany falling apart in two worlds"
The result shows that the Greens continue to win elections mainly in the West. The 20.5 percent they have achieved in the European elections, they owe primarily their strength in the old federal states. After the European elections, party leader Robert Habeck said in view of the upcoming Eastern elections: "We do not want Germany falling apart two worlds 30 years after the turnaround."
Just this Sunday it almost seems like that. Again and again, the Greens and the journalists look at their cell phones to follow the mayoral elections in Hannover, Lower Saxony. During the evening, Green Belit Onay scores a record 32.2 percent. He is on par with the CDU, the SPD lands far behind in third place. Between Hanover and Erfurt are just 179 kilometers as the crow flies. Politically, these are worlds.
More about the state election in Thuringia
Meanwhile in Erfurt: Greens boss Habeck explains the ARD, for the Greens, it had been increasingly difficult in the East German countries. In Thuringia it was again especially difficult. There are only three major cities, of which only Erfurt has more than 200,000 inhabitants. In addition, the green regional association in Thuringia is the smallest in Germany and was long argued as notorious. For a long time they were not present in many small towns and villages. That has changed only in the past few months.
In the election campaign, especially the topic of wind power was highly polarized, even among green conservationists near it is controversial. They do not want wind turbines in the forest, but the Greens did not rule them out in the election campaign. Otherwise, the Greens had focused on democracy. However, so did CDU and left campaigning.
For the Greens, only their unique selling point was climate protection. In times of CO2 price threats and diesel driving bans, however, this is not necessarily an electoral advantage in a federal state with a high proportion of rural areas. Actually, the Greens had the hope to win from the Thuringian CDU voters - the calculus did not work out. Now they may become part of a giant coalition. Questionable, whether the Greens can prevail thematically.
They are not the "leading force of the left middle"
One and a half years ago, Habeck and Baerbock set out with the clear goal of widening the party by topic. In Thuringia they failed.
Not only the short result in Thuringia is cause for concern for the Greens. They flew in 2016 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern from the state parliament. "Structurally weak regions continue to be a bigger challenge for us," says Baerbock on election night. Not only in East Germany, also deep in the West, the Greens have these problems: In Saarland, they failed in the 2017 state election, the five-percent hurdle.
Thuringia is a small state, you may not hang the result too high. But it is nevertheless clear: the Greens can not claim to be the "leading force in the left center" in Germany with such results. Or even people's party.
