Coalition gossip and Ukraine trouble after the election in NRW?
Union threatens enormous loss of importance
Created: 05/15/2022, 17:20
By: Florian Naumann
In exchange: The party leaders Friedrich Merz (r) and Markus Söder with Hendrik Wüst.
© Florian Gaertner/Imago
Plenty of fuel is provided for in the NRW election.
Depending on the result, the SPD, CDU or AfD could come under pressure at federal level.
The reactions in the ticker.
State elections in North Rhine-Westphalia: The polls in the most populous federal state are also being closely observed in Berlin.
The result from NRW could also shake the big federal parties.
Be it about a further loss of power for the CDU or a state parliament exit for the AfD.
For the SPD, the election with 13 million voters could be a kind of mood test for Olaf Scholz' (Ukraine) policy.
In this
news ticker we keep you
up to date on the most important reactions to the NRW elections.
Preliminary report:
Munich/Düsseldorf – North Rhine-Westphalia elects a new state parliament.
And unlike the previous state elections in Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, according to polls, a close race to win the election is to be expected.
It is quite possible that the election result from North Rhine-Westphalia will send waves of shock or outrage to political Berlin.
NRW election: Scholz and Merz look to Dusseldorf – voting not only about Wüst and Kuchaty
On the one hand, the office of prime minister in the most populous federal state is symbolically important.
The loss of CDU power in Düsseldorf would be an unpleasant setback for the still relatively freshly elected party leader Friedrich Merz.
For the SPD, North Rhine-Westphalia is considered the “heart chamber” anyway.
From 1966 to 2005, the Social Democrats held office in Düsseldorf as state fathers;
From 2010 to 2017, Hannelore Kraft was followed by an SPD woman as head of the state chancellery.
The old "people's parties" - and still in good shape in North Rhine-Westphalia - are feeling the pressure.
And of course the vote of the approximately 13 million eligible voters could also fuel national political debates.
Politics in Ukraine recently dominated the news in Germany.
Merz tried to put Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) under pressure with a trip to Kyiv, among other things.
A clear NRW victory could support his positions.
Election in NRW: reactions to the outcome – is there a coalition scandal?
Coalition number games bring additional explosiveness to the state elections.
On the one hand, the CDU had a small but stable lead in the polls shortly before election day.
On the other hand, the SPD and the Greens could get a majority, but in any case for a traffic light.
So a government without the possible winner of the election, the CDU.
Forming a government against the winner of the election would be a minor affront.
Still, it could be within the realm of possibility.
A red-green coalition would be an obvious option for both the SPD and the Greens.
The CDU, on the other hand, will probably not be able to continue its alliance with the FDP - and will have to get the Greens or the SPD on its side to find a majority.
The anger of the Christian Democrats would be great, however, if the top candidate Hendrik Wüst went away empty-handed despite the election victory.
At the same time, the NRW election is of great importance for the Bundesrat.
North Rhine-Westphalia has six votes in the state chamber.
If the CDU flies out of the state government in Düsseldorf, a small Gau for the conservatives could follow in the next state election in autumn – in the state election in Lower Saxony: With another flop, the CDU and CSU would then receive less than half of the votes in the second (Co-)control the chamber.
This did not mean that the left had a traffic light majority in the Bundesrat due to several government participations.
But in any case, a severe loss of importance for the Union.
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