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SPD and CDU election posters in Düsseldorf
Photo:
Oliver Berg / dpa
More than 13 million voters can elect a new state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia on Sunday.
The vote in the most populous federal state is considered a small federal election.
For Chancellor Olaf Scholz, it is an important mood test.
Can his Social Democrats win back the country with top candidate Thomas Kutschaty?
Or will CDU incumbent Hendrik Wüst succeed in defending?
A few days before the election, the CDU and SPD are close together: In a survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL, the Union achieved around 32 percent, the SPD came to 29 percent.
The statistical error is up to 2.7 percentage points, so it is not possible to make a clear statement about the ranking of the two parties.
The Greens are in third place with around 16 percent, the FDP and AfD are each around seven percent.
The left would miss the entry into the state parliament with around three percent.
Important for the classification of this survey: It is not a prognosis of the outcome of the election, but reflects an intermediate status in the opinion-forming process of the voters.
The survey period covered May 5th to 12th, i.e. the past seven days.
This means that there are still around four days before the polling stations close on Sunday in which voters can still change their minds.
Such behavior has been observed again and again in many votes in the recent past, especially in state elections.
A black-yellow coalition is currently ruling in Düsseldorf, with a majority of just one vote.
After the last state election in 2017, Armin Laschet replaced the SPD Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft, whose state association had achieved the worst result since 1947 at the time.
When Laschet entered the Bundestag last autumn as a failed Union Chancellor candidate, the then State Transport Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) took over the office of Prime Minister.
If the CDU were voted out of office in North Rhine-Westphalia, the Union parties would only have five out of 16 prime ministers, while the SPD would lead a total of nine state governments in North Rhine-Westphalia with one head of government.
After the bitter defeat in the federal elections last year and in the state elections in Saarland, a defeat in the most populous federal state would threaten the CDU with a further loss of importance and less say in the Bundesrat.
On the other hand, the clear election victory of Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU) in Schleswig-Holstein last Sunday could bring an upswing.
The election in North Rhine-Westphalia is the third of four state elections this year.
In Lower Saxony, the election will take place on October 9th.
asc/AFP
