FDP bankruptcy in NRW – election researchers see two reasons: Corona resentment and a Lindner “mistake”

Created: 05/17/2022, 14:03

By: Franziska Schwarz

Final sprint in the NRW state election campaign: Christian Lindner in Düsseldorf © Piero Nigro /aal.photo/Imago

The FDP only just stays in the state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia.

In 2017 things looked even rosier for them.

Why are things not going well for the Liberals?

Munich – The Liberals have co-governed in Düsseldorf for the past five years, but bankruptcy followed in the 2022 NRW election: only 5.9 percent of the votes cast instead of 12.6 percent as in 2017. In purely mathematical terms, the most populous federal state is now a traffic light coalition as possible in the federal government;

According to the first projections, NRW-FDP top candidate Joachim Stamp believed in the WRD rather firmly in black and green: "The question does not arise."

Party leader Christian Lindner spoke of a "sad evening" on Twitter and promised: "We will analyze that".

Others do that on the morning after the election night: the FDP in NRW has only ever done well with outstanding personalities such as Jürgen Möllemann and Lindner, political scientist Karl-Rudolf Korte from the University of Duisburg told the dpa news agency.

Otherwise, the liberals in North Rhine-Westphalia would have always struggled.

NRW has long been considered the SPD's "homeland".

In addition, "the market element" in the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is currently not really visible, says Korte.

NRW election bankruptcy for the FDP: education policy as a "fundamental problem"?

Election researcher Jürgen Falter sees the liberals’ Corona policy as the reason for their poor performance.

"Giving freedom over security in Corona times is not well received by older people," said the Mainz politics professor of the

on Monday (May 16).

“Vulnerable population groups prefer to opt for the safety of a mask instead of leaving it out for freedom.” According to initial election analyzes in NRW, the FDP has lost a lot of votes, especially in the older voter group.

But not only in this group.

pointed out that the Liberals have also lost votes among civil servants and women, and sees the problem in their education policy - quote: "a fundamental problem of the FDP as a whole".

Hardly any other party in Germany talks so much about "equal opportunities", and yet the FDP-NRW education minister invested less money in the "youngest minds" in the past legislative period than in any other federal state.

Federal FDP in “unfortunate situation” even before NRW election, according to expert

Back to the 12.6 percent of 2017. At that time, they were a record result for the FDP state association in North Rhine-Westphalia.

In the same year, the Liberals returned to the Bundestag under leading candidate Lindner, from which they were kicked out in 2013.

Currently, the federal FDP is even part of the traffic light coalition.

There she sees Falter in a conversation with the

, however, in a "very unfortunate situation".

In view of the Ukraine war, it was "perhaps a mistake to take over the Ministry of Finance this time and not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs".

Finance Minister Lindner was forced by the war and the pandemic to take on a very large amount of new debt - "which does not fit with his previous rhetoric," said Falter.