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SPD debacle in the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia: effective hit against Chancellor Olaf Scholz

2022-05-15T19:49:58.162Z


For Olaf Scholz and the SPD, the result in North Rhine-Westphalia is a moderate catastrophe. Why? Three reasons.


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Chancellor Scholz

Photo: IMAGO/Christian Spicker

The chancellor is silent.

Not a word can be heard from Olaf Scholz about the election in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Why should he speak up?

A state election is known to be a state election.

Not the level of a chancellor.

Everyone knows.

But wait a minute.

Wasn't there something?

Were there not these posters of his during the election campaign in the Rhine and Ruhr?

Wasn't Scholz regularly on the move in the most populous federal state to help his party, to enable the change of government in Düsseldorf with his political power?

Sure, there was something, everything can still be found in the archive.

Unfortunately, everyone knows.

There are many reasons for the miserable performance of the Social Democrats in North Rhine-Westphalia, a weak lead candidate, strong Greens, the complicated legacy of previous SPD governments.

But because of Scholz's commitment, it would be strange to downplay the historical crash in the deep west in terms of national politics.

For Scholz and the SPD, the election brought such bad news that some Social Democrats had a little trouble putting the situation into perspective on election night.

More on that later.

The first message is

that Scholz is no longer pulling.

If what the pollsters from Infratest are true, for some voters on Sunday the chancellor was apparently more of an obstacle to voting for the SPD than a reason to tick it.

  • More than half of those entitled to vote criticized his unclear course in the Ukraine war.

  • Barely a third saw the chancellor as a "great support" for the SPD.

It's as if the voters had called out to Scholz not even half a year after he moved in: Not like that.

Restart a chancellorship?

As is well known, Scholz does not like to change his style or his sound.

But now that his course is apparently becoming a risk for his party, it might make sense for him to think about a new theme tune, possibly even a fresh start for his chancellorship.

Short note: In a few months there will be elections in Lower Saxony.

Not an entirely unimportant country for social democracy.

The second message is

that it will now be much more difficult to keep the traffic light government together.

The FDP is in greater panic after their miserable results in Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and now in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The enormous sums of money that the war is consuming and the creative attempts to conceal this are jeopardizing the core liberal promise of sound budgetary policy.

The FDP will have to start all over again at the traffic light if they don't want to be swallowed up.

The Greens, on the other hand, should simply want to continue after their top result, pushing the chancellor in front of them with clarity, clever communication and coolness.

Scholz should now be very busy keeping the Liberals under control – and the Greens somehow at a distance.

Welcome to the reality of a tripartite alliance.

The third message is

that Scholz now has a powerful opponent: Friedrich Merz.

The CDU chairman has his party better and better under control.

Because he was opposition leader 20 years ago, he easily recognizes the weaknesses of the chancellor and the constraints of the FDP.

Merz, who has only been in office for a few months, has already had two electoral successes in three attempts, after the victory in Schleswig-Holstein now also in his home country.

Anyone who knows the Sauerland knows that success can easily go to his head.

But if he has something under control, it should now be more difficult for Scholz in Parliament.

Possibly already when voting on the special fund for the Bundeswehr, in any case one wonders why Merz should actually accommodate the Chancellor in the negotiations about the details.

Kühnert misses the point

After all, the Social Democrats can cling a little to the hope that the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia will not opt ​​for black and green, but for a traffic light.

Then the SPD might still move into the state chancellery in Düsseldorf.

Mathematically, that would work. And indeed: Black-Green may be an attractive alliance for some Greens, but would have the huge disadvantage that they would help the CDU in this way to torment the federal government in Berlin even more and Hendrik Wüst on top of that to position potential chancellor candidates.

The decision between the traffic light and black-green in NRW is therefore not trivial.

Incidentally, one person seemed to be in a surprisingly good mood on the evening of the election, so good that one could think that it was not the CDU that had won the election, but the SPD: Kevin Kühnert, Secretary General of the Social Democrats.

On television he raved about having achieved the central goal, namely the deselection of the black-yellow government alliance in Düsseldorf.

One is not at all dissatisfied with the SPD result, said Kühnert, who governs is completely open.

Red-green or black-green - that is the question now.

Of course, even in the worst situations, general secretaries have to act as if things are really all right.

Only the option he mentioned was a bit hasty.

Red-Green, it became apparent a little later, does not have a majority in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-05-15

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