A Different Center Holds in Germany A new center-left emerges as the old center-right sinks.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-different-center-holds-in-germany-11615848274?mod=opinion_lead_pos4
Germany on Sunday fired the starting pistol on this year’s marathon of local and federal elections, with regional votes in two states. The results suggest voters are tiring of political stasis as Angela Merkel’s 16-year run as chancellor nears its end.
The result is a very German shake up, since the governments in the two states that voted won’t change. The left-leaning Green party extended its 10-year hold on Baden-Württemberg with an increased vote share of 32.6% compared to 30.3% in 2016. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) finished first in Rhineland Palatinate, although with a slightly smaller share of 35.7% from 36.2% five years ago.
The shock is the poor performance of the second-place finisher in each race, Mrs. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU). The party’s share of the vote sank to postwar lows in both states—24.1% in Baden-Württemberg and 27.7% in Rhineland Palatinate. This extends the CDU’s multiyear downward trend as voters grow less enamored with it each time they’re asked to pass judgment. The electoral skepticism includes their Bavarian sister party, the CSU, whose vote share fell by 10 percentage points in 2018 state elections.
This steady ebb of voter confidence is an immediate challenge for Armin Laschet, selected by CDU members in January to be their new party leader and potential candidate to replace Mrs. Merkel in national elections in the autumn. He’s too new on the job to be directly responsible for these local losses. A scandal involving pandemic procurement among some CDU politicians in Berlin didn’t help. Neither did a botched Covid-19 vaccine rollout and escalating political tensions surrounding Mrs. Merkel’s lockdowns.
But a failure to stem state-level defeats contributed to the defenestration of Mr. Laschet’s predecessor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was Mrs. Merkel’s preferred candidate. If Mr. Laschet can’t turn things around in other state elections this year, he may be forced to let CSU leader Marcus Söder run as the conservatives’ candidate for chancellor. Opinion polls suggest Mr. Söder is more popular.
The CDU and CSU combined are still likely to be the biggest vote-getters in the national election, but probably with a diminished vote share. The important races will be for second place, and for enough seats to potentially join a coalition government.
One winner is likely to be the Green party, which extended its winning streak of recent years on Sunday and could emerge as the main center-left opposition party this year. A loser is likely to be the SPD, which is suffering an identity crisis as it languishes in an unwieldy right-left grand coalition with Mrs. Merkel in Berlin and its old blue-collar base dwindles.
It’s too soon to speculate about what sort of coalition government this kaleidoscope might produce, let alone what policies that government might pursue. German voters appear not to know what they want. But Sunday’s state elections are a sign the eurozone’s largest economy may be emerging from the political torpor of the Merkel era. Not a moment too soon given the challenges Germany, and Europe, will face after the pandemic.
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