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Friedrich Merz: A successful evening for the CDU chairman
Photo: MICHELE TANTUSSI / REUTERS
Friedrich Merz is not in Berlin on Sunday evening, he is on his way from his home in the Westphalian Sauerland to the federal capital, after all the party committees are meeting in the CDU headquarters on Monday morning.
Will the chairman afford at least a piccolo in the car fund when he learns the first forecasts and projections for the North Rhine-Westphalian state election?
The atmosphere in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, where some members of the party leadership have gathered on the upper floors, is very cheerful, so it can be heard.
Merz knew exactly what hurdle this evening meant for him.
The state elections in Saarland at the end of March, in which his party crashed terribly and lost the state chancellery, were a major setback for the new chairman.
Then came the CDU triumph a week ago in Schleswig-Holstein.
But what mattered was this Sunday.
NRW, a good 13 million voters, a giant among the federal states, plus its homeland: This is where the half-year balance sheet of party leader Merz, elected in December, would be decided - and the mood in the CDU set for the coming months.
And now this: Prime Minister and head of state Hendrik Wüst has led the CDU to first place by a clear margin, while the SPD at the same time achieved its historically weakest result in NRW.
No wonder that the mood in the CDU federal leadership is excellent, General Secretary Mario Czaja is also very satisfied with his obligatory appearance in front of the press in Berlin.
There is only one message from Merz himself on Twitter, in which he congratulates Wüst and calls the result "outstanding".
Merz writes that the NRW election was also a "national political mood test": "The @CDU is back, our forward-looking course has been confirmed."
What role he and the federal party actually played in the success in Düsseldorf is an exciting question.
Merz often appeared in the election campaign, five times together with Wüst.
In any case, the federal trend of the Union, which is ahead of the SPD of Chancellor Olaf Scholz in all current polls, should not have done any harm in NRW.
And the fact that Merz, as Union faction leader and opposition leader, recently drove the traffic light coalition in front of him in the debate about the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine and traveled to Kyiv before the first member of the government, seems to be well received by his own people.
Regardless of whether and to what extent NRW was also a Merz election: It was probably an anti-Scholz election – and of course the CDU chairman and his party like that very much that evening.
SPD top candidate Kutschaty hooked up with the chancellor and even had posters put up with Scholz.
But the supposed chancellor bonus has apparently fizzled out.
Still, it's just an almost perfect evening for Merz and his party.
There is one thing that clouds the feeling of triumph in the CDU a little, both in Düsseldorf and in the Adenauer House: the SPD, albeit clearly inferior, is not yet defeated.
Even if, after counting the votes, it is not enough for the government with the Greens that the Social Democrats are striving for, the SPD could still – as in the federal government – achieve a majority with a traffic light alliance, i.e. with the FDP as another coalition partner.
The SPD argued like Laschet after the federal election
That evening, the Christian Democrats watched in amazement as the SPD repeated the strategy of the failed Union chancellor candidate, Armin Laschet, who Wüst followed in Düsseldorf as head of government.
In the federal election last autumn, after the first second place projections for the Union, Laschet emphasized that the CDU and CSU still had a government mandate because a coalition with the Greens and FDP was possible.
In fact, both parties were then invited to exploratory talks.
The difference, however, is that although the Union with Laschet also achieved its historically worst result in a federal election at the time, the gap to the SPD was only a good one and a half percentage points in the end.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, there is a difference of around eight percentage points between the CDU and the Social Democrats.
The SPD is now smugly confronted with the sentences of leading Social Democrats on the evening of the Bundestag election, with which they had emphasized the entitlement of the first-place winner to form a government.
For the CDU, it depends on the Greens
If the SPD still sticks to its course?
Then it's all up to the Greens: In the end, they would have to decide between the CDU and the SPD in Düsseldorf.
So it's no wonder that the leading Christian Democrats said kindly about their preferred Green coalition partner that evening.
The record result of the Greens - around 18 percent with an increase of around twelve percentage points - is also "due to the good work of the ministers in Berlin", says Secretary General Czaja.
This should primarily mean the Federal Minister of Economics and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
Party leader Merz is also of the opinion that the two are among the lighthouses of the traffic light government.
He would probably have no problem ruling with them.
But now it's NRW's turn.