Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck and the NRW election: Number 2 wins

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Vice Habeck, Chancellor Scholz

Photo: CLEMENS BILAN / EPA

In recent months, it has often become clear what Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) thinks of North Rhine-Westphalia's Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU): relatively little.

He is said to have made fun of him in internal circles, and at meetings with the prime ministers he let Wüst run up more than once.

So on Sunday there will probably have been a moment of belated satisfaction for the CDU candidate: While he emerged as the clear winner from this state election, it was a day of personal defeat for the chancellor.

Scholz had made a strong contribution to the election campaign, his face smiled from many posters, until the end he stood by the SPD candidate Thomas Kutschaty - but the Social Democrats were still making losses in their former homeland.

Despite Scholz, or, one has to assume: because of Scholz.

Restraint, arrogance, sometimes unclear messages

According to Infratest dimap, only 35 percent of voters in North Rhine-Westphalia stated that Scholz was a great support for the SPD locally.

For comparison: Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck achieved 57 percent.

The fact that the chancellor bonus did not work also has to do with the political style that Scholz has cultivated since taking office: a mixture of restraint, arrogance and sometimes unclear messages, with which more and more people apparently have a problem.

While Scholz benefited from his image as a level-headed and almost stoic politician for a long time, his style now seems smug and not forward-looking to many.

It is a different political style that triumphed that evening, it is the style that Economics Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock cultivate, it is the green style.

Both have distinguished themselves in their new roles, bringing their party back with them as they did in their prime as a duo in the chair - with record profits as a result.

All in all, the traffic light lost that evening, with a weakening SPD, with a brutal loss for the Liberals, which is why it is audacious that the Social Democrats of all people are now campaigning for such an alliance in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The Greens were the only governing party from the federal government to triumph.

The party has experienced some highs in its history, in polls and in elections, but it rarely lasted long.

The special thing about her recent success in the elections in Schleswig-Holstein and now in North Rhine-Westphalia is that it is not only based on expectations and promises, but for the first time on government work, i.e. on content and political style.

The way Habeck and Baerbock accompany the country through this time of war, with clear words, emotionality and sometimes the admission that they themselves suffer from the many compulsions to act, they seem to convince people.

There are two boring-sounding words that describe this secret of success well: authenticity and empathy.