Christian Social Union (Germany)

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    Bavarian Election Results Signal Trouble for Scholz’s Government

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    The election served as a midterm report card for Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the grades were not good.German voters handed a victory on Sunday to mainstream conservatives in a state election in Bavaria — as well as in the smaller central state of Hesse — while punishing the three parties running the country.While all three of the governing parties lost votes, symbolically at least, the far-right Alternative for Germany and another populist party were the evening’s clear victors, notching record results in both states when compared with other western states.The results were considered an important midterm report card for the national coalition government of the Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, which received some tough grades. They were also seen as a bellwether of the larger political trends building in the country, not least the fracturing of the political landscape as populist and far-right parties make inroads.Here’s what happened and what it means.The mainstream is eroding.In Bavaria, the conservative Christian Social Union, which has governed the southern region for nearly seven decades, received its lowest level of support in more than a half-century, garnering less than 37 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results.That will allow the incumbent governor, Markus Söder, to serve another term, but only in coalition with the populist Free Voters, who came in at well over 15 percent of the vote, despite a last-minute antisemitism scandal involving the party’s firebrand leader, Hubert Aiwanger.In Hesse, which has fewer than half the voters of Bavaria, the incumbent governor for the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., won a decisive victory after an ineffective campaign by the federal interior minister, who ran for the Social Democrats and came in third, behind the far-right AfD.Bavaria’s governor, Markus Söder, left, and Hubert Aiwanger, the leader of the Bavarian Free Voters party, in 2018 after signing the coalition contract in Munich.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut it was the vote in Bavaria that was the most closely watched, and the outcome was taken as further evidence of the erosion of Germany’s traditional mainstream political parties, left and right. It is a phenomenon that has been witnessed across Europe — in Spain, Italy and France, as well as in Scandinavian countries.Less than a generation ago, the Christian Social Union could depend on the support of large masses of German voters, earning it the name Volkspartei, or people’s party.No more.“The crisis of the mainstream parties has also reached Bavaria and is hitting the CSU with increasing force,” said Thomas Schlemmer, a historian of Bavarian politics. “Today, you vote based on your individual lifestyle, not because of tradition.”Even before Sunday’s vote, Mr. Söder and his Christian Social Union were having to govern in coalition with the populist Free Voters. Now, they will be even more dependent on the Free Voters, underscoring the Christian Social Union’s increasing vulnerability.Much the same has happened nationally to its sister party, the much larger C.D.U., the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, as center-right support has been eaten into by populist and extremist parties, like AfD.Virtually the only reason the AfD, which came in second at just under 16 percent, did not do better in Bavaria was the presence of Free Voters, a homegrown Bavarian party with populist tendencies, which split the right-wing vote.Populists are rising.The Free Voters, a party that was founded by independent municipal and district politicians in 2009, is playing an ever-larger role in Bavarian state politics, where it is once again expected to be the junior partner in the state coalition.Its outsize role has underscored the rise of populist forces nationwide.Mr. Aiwanger, a fiery beer-tent speaker, has become the face of the party, bringing it further toward populism by criticizing immigration and environmental legislation.Mr. Aiwanger speaking at a campaign event on Thursday in Mainburg, Germany.Matthias Schrader/Associated PressAt an event this summer, Mr. Aiwanger called for the “silent majority” to “take back democracy” from the government in Berlin, in language that for many Germans evoked the country’s Nazi past. Although he was criticized by other politicians and the mainstream news media, the speech did nothing to quell his popularity among voters.“The success of the Free Voters is due to Hubert Aiwanger’s populist impulses and not to the constructive policies they have pursued in the municipalities for many decades,” said Roman Deininger, a reporter with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a daily newspaper based in Munich, who has followed Bavarian politics for decades.Mr. Aiwanger and his party managed to succeed despite a campaign marred by scandal in August, when Mr. Aiwanger was discovered to have had a homemade antisemitic handbill in his possession while he was in high school in the 1980s.Mr. Aiwanger quickly turned the scandal into an advantage, claiming that the newspaper that broke the story had waited until the heat of the campaign to discredit him. Voters apparently believed the narrative: Mr. Aiwanger and his party saw a bump in polling numbers.The Greens are despised.Throughout the campaign, conservative and populist parties made the left-leaning environmentalist Green party a stand-in for the governing coalition of Mr. Scholz.Though the Greens are just one of three parties in the coalition, along with the center-left Social Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats, they were singled out for special antipathy.“The Greens are the new enemy,” said Andrea Römmele, a political analyst at the Hertie School, a university in Berlin. “It’s a framing that the Greens are somehow the party of bans and the opponent in a culture war.”Election posters in Unterempfenbach, Germany, near Mainburg.Matthias Schrader/Associated PressThe verbal attacks seemed to have had an effect. During one campaign appearance in Neu-Ulm, in the west of the state, Katharina Schulze and Ludwig Hartmann, the co-chairs of the Bavarian Greens, were onstage when a man in the crowd threw a stone at them.“That really was a shock,” Ms. Schulze, who campaigns with a police security detail, said in an interview.There were no confrontations during a majority of her campaign stops, she said, but added, “Of course our political competitors like to pour oil on the fire.”Despite that, the Greens in Bavaria came in at well over 14 percent.Mr. Söder, the governor, himself vowed he would not form a coalition with the Greens — even though Sunday’s election returns gave him the numbers to do so — and instead said he would continue in coalition with the populist Free Voters.“With their worldview, the Greens do not fit Bavaria, and that is why there will be no Greens in the Bavarian state government,” Mr. Söder said during a campaign stop in September. “No way!”Mr. Scholz’s coalition is in trouble.Although the results in Bavaria have no direct consequence on the government in Berlin, all three parties in the national coalition lost significant voter share in the election.The liberal Free Democratic Party, which occupies the important post of finance minister, is predicted to fail entry into the state house because of its bad showing.That portends badly for Mr. Scholz, who is about two years into a four-year term, especially because parties in Bavaria ran against his coalition in Berlin as much as against each other.In their stump speeches, both Mr. Söder and Mr. Aiwanger made dissatisfaction with the Berlin government their theme, railing against perceived dictums on gender-neutral speech, vegetarianism and rules for heating private homes — a Green party push that has engendered special animus.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany last month in Berlin.Clemens Bilan/EPA, via ShutterstockThey also pushed back against the unpopular decision to close the three remaining nuclear power plants this past April.“The coalition is the worst government Germany has ever had,” Mr. Söder said during a speech last month.While such statements are typical of over-the-top campaigning, a recent opinion poll shows that 79 percent of Germans are unhappy with the coalition. Only 19 percent are satisfied with its work.Those are the government’s lowest approval ratings since it was formed in December 2021. More

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      Germany’s Election Is Armin Laschet's to Lose, but Will He Succeed?

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      Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, is flagging in the polls, and he seems to be dragging the party down with him.FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany — His party is the biggest in Germany. It has won all but three elections since 1950, including the past four. Its departing chancellor is more popular than any politician in the country. And German voters crave stability and continuity.Armin Laschet, the conservative Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, should be riding high. The race to replace Angela Merkel was his to lose.So far, he appears to be doing just that.Weeks before Germans vote on Sept. 26 in their most important election in a generation — one that will produce a chancellor who is not Ms. Merkel for the first time in 16 years — Mr. Laschet is sinking, and he is pulling his party down with him.The race is still close enough, and Germany’s coalition politics so unpredictable, that it would be dangerous to dismiss the conservative candidate. But after recent polls showed Mr. Laschet’s party dropping to record lows — of 20 percent to 22 percent support — his position is so dire that even some Christian Democrats have wondered aloud whether they picked the wrong candidate.More broadly, Mr. Laschet’s campaign has prompted queasiness among conservatives who fear they could be seeing a weakness in the party’s appeal that has been disguised for years by Ms. Merkel’s own popularity and is now exacerbated by her inability to groom a replacement.In 2018, she announced her personally chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a moderate centrist. But even with Ms. Merkel’s support, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer had trouble stepping out of the chancellor’s shadow and building her own base. She quit in 2020 as leader of the conservatives, leaving the door open for Mr. Laschet.Mr. Laschet had long boasted that if he could run Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, where he has been governor since 2017, he could run the country. But then extraordinary flooding this summer called even that credential into question, exposing flaws in his environmental policies and disaster management.Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr. Laschet visited the flood-ravaged district of Iversheim in July.Pool photo by Wolfgang Rattay“The biggest problem for Laschet is that he has not been able to convince voters that he can do the job like Merkel,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the University of Bonn.She cited images of him laughing as the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, made a somber speech after devastating flash floods that killed 180 people, and posing before a mound of trash to make a statement of his own. “He comes across as uncertain, flippant and unprofessional,” Ms. Reuschenbach said.In recent weeks, Mr. Laschet has seen his individual popularity drop below that of his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Scholz, while support for Mr. Laschet’s party has been in a free fall since late July. The situation is so dire that Ms. Merkel, who had said she wanted to stay out of the race, is now intervening and trying to rally voters for Mr. Laschet.“Let’s be honest: It is tight. It will be very tight in the coming weeks,” Markus Söder, the head of the conservatives’ Bavarian branch, the Christian Social Union, and an erstwhile rival, said at an election rally on Aug. 20 that was meant to propel Mr. Laschet’s campaign into a final, intense stretch. “It is no longer a question of how we could govern, but possibly of whether.”Mr. Söder openly challenged Mr. Laschet this year for the chance to succeed the chancellor, and he still enjoys a higher individual popularity rating among Germans than Mr. Laschet’s.Germans elect parties, not a chancellor candidate. But over the course of Ms. Merkel’s four terms in office, her party has enjoyed the so-called chancellor bonus, meaning the willingness of voters to effectively cast a ballot for consistency.Although Ms. Merkel remains Germany’s most popular politician, her recent attempts to drum up support for Mr. Laschet have failed to turn his fortunes around, partly because they have appeared last-minute and halfhearted.Election campaign billboards featuring Mr. Laschet, left, and his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Schoz.John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInstead, Mr. Scholz now appears to be reaping the incumbent benefit, playing up his closeness to Ms. Merkel to become the second most popular politician in the country.“Even conservative voters tend to approve of Mr. Scholz,” said Ursula Münch, the director of the Academy for Political Education in Tützing.Yet Mr. Laschet is known for comebacks, for surviving blunders — including making up grades for exam papers when he was lecturing — and for his ability to turn around a sagging campaign in the final stretch. In the weeks before the 2017 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, he focused on the need to increase security against a backdrop of record break-ins, to better integrate migrants and to reposition the state’s industry to focus on the future. The strategy worked and he defeated the incumbent Social Democratic governor, whom he had trailed in the polls for most of the race.Among Mr. Laschet’s influences is his faith. At a time when more and more Germans are quitting the Roman Catholic Church, Mr. Laschet is a proud member. “I am not someone who uses Bible verses in my politics,” he said. “But of course it has influenced me.” And Ms. Merkel has praised his Christianity as a guiding moral compass.Mr. Laschet noted that his faith was something he had in common with President Biden, adding that the last time the leaders of the United States and Germany shared that faith was in the 1960s, with President John F. Kennedy and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — also a Christian Democrat.Mr. Laschet talking with residents of Frankfurt an der Oder, in eastern Germany, last month.Jens Schlueter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnother influence for Mr. Laschet is Aachen, Germany’s westernmost city, where he was born and raised. Growing up in a place with deep ties to Belgium and the Netherlands, Mr. Laschet has been integrated into the larger European ideal all of his life. He still maintains a home in Aachen with his wife, Susanne, whom he met through their church choir and youth group. Together they have three grown children, including, Joe Laschet, a social media influencer and fashionista for classic men’s wear.Mr. Laschet’s first political post was as a municipal official in 1979. He was elected to the German Parliament in 1994, and then, five years later, he was elected to represent his home region as a member of the European Parliament. He entered state government in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005, as Germany’s first minister for integration — a role focused on migrants and their descendants that earned him nationwide recognition.After the Christian Democrats suffered a stinging defeat in the 2012 state elections, Mr. Laschet helped rebuild the party. He supported Ms. Merkel’s decision to welcome more than a million migrants in 2015, and two years later, he became the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia.This January, he fought to become the leader of the Christian Democrats, beating Mr. Söder, who remains a more popular politician with many Germans, but whether Mr. Laschet can save himself remains to be seen.He has had some minor successes, including a feisty appearance in the first televised debate and deftly dealing with an angry vaccination opponent who stormed the stage during a campaign stop. Mr. Laschet has also assembled a team of experts, including former rivals, like Friedrich Merz, who is well liked among the party’s conservative wing, in an effort to show his bridge-building skills. But none of these things have made a dent in the widening gap with the Social Democrats.At a campaign stop in Frankfurt an der Oder, a woman wielding a cellphone pushed her way toward the candidate as he stood on a bridge overlooking the Polish border, making a statement to reporters about Germany’s role in Europe.Asked if she intended to vote for Mr. Laschet, she demurred. “I don’t know yet who I will vote for,” said the woman, Elisabeth Pillep, 44. “But I don’t think it will be him.” More

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      A Bitter Family Feud Dominates the Race to Replace Merkel

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      Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will exit the world stage in less than six months, and the fight for her seat is pitting the leaders of two sister parties against one another.BERLIN — With less than six months to go before Germans cast their ballots for a new chancellor, the political vacuum Angela Merkel leaves behind after 16 years of consensus-oriented leadership is coming more sharply into focus.A rare and rancorous power struggle has gripped Germany’s conservatives this week as two rivals vie to replace her, threatening to further hobble her Christian Democratic Union, which is already sliding in the polls.Normally, Armin Laschet, 60, who was elected in January to lead the party, would almost assuredly be the heir apparent to Ms. Merkel. Instead, he finds himself unexpectedly pitted against his biggest rival, Markus Söder, the more popular head of a smaller, Bavaria-only party, the Christian Social Union, in a kind of conservative family feud.Experts and party members alike are calling for the dispute to be resolved within the coming days, as it risks damaging the reputation of the two conservative parties, jointly referred to as the Union. Because the two parties operate as one on the national stage, they must choose one candidate for chancellor.“Armin Laschet and Markus Söder must finally understand their responsibility toward the Union,” Tilman Kuban, head of the Young Union, told the Bild daily on Thursday. “If they continue to tear one another apart as they have in the past few days, together they will ensure that there won’t be much left of the Christian Democrats or the Christian Socialists in the future.”Leading Ms. Merkel’s party would have once been seen as an advantage for Mr. Laschet, but it has recently become a drag. With a botched vaccine rollout and a confusing response to the pandemic, support for the conservatives has plunged by 10 percentage points since the start of the year.After a series of personal gaffes, Mr. Laschet’s popularity has been dropping. In his home state of North Rhine-Westphalia more than half of the population have said they are not happy with his performance, and a poll this week showed only 4 percent of Germans nationwide see him as “a strong leader.”For Armin Laschet, leading Ms. Merkel’s party was once an asset, but may now be seen as a liability. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesAt the same time, Mr. Söder, 54, who is also governor of Bavaria, has artfully used several appearances alongside Ms. Merkel after pandemic-related meetings to burnish his image as a man in charge, capable of tackling tough issues and getting things done.A full 57 percent of Germans said Mr. Söder displayed the qualities of “a strong leader.”Keenly aware of his popularity, Mr. Söder began openly pushing for the candidacy earlier this week, citing his strong, stable showing in the polls over Mr. Laschet, despite warnings from senior conservatives that public opinion could be fickle.“At the end of the day, the conservative parties have to make an offer that will be acceptable to voters and the people, and not just a few party functionaries,” Mr. Söder told Bavarian public television. “Of course polls are not everything, but if after several months a clear trend emerges, it cannot just be ignored.”After leading conservative lawmakers discussed the issue on Sunday, Mr. Söder said he was willing to run, if the Christian Democrats would support him. If not, he added, he would cooperate, “without any grudges.”But on Monday, after the boards of each party had backed their own leader, Mr. Söder suddenly changed his position. He continued to push for his right to run for chancellor during a closed-door meeting of conservative lawmakers on Tuesday. After four hours of discussions, nearly two-thirds of those present expressed their support for the Bavarian leader — including members of Mr. Laschet’s party.Markus Söder is leading Mr. Laschet in polling and has the support of nearly two-thirds of conservative leaders. Clemens Bilan/EPA, via ShutterstockIn a country that views the art of compromise as a valuable skill for a leader, the public game of political chicken could come at a high price. At a time when the environmentalist Greens have rapidly risen in popularity and are now nipping at the conservatives’ heels, they can ill afford such a public display of disharmony.“At the end of the day, both have to decide between themselves. There is no set procedure that clearly defines how this will end,” said Prof. Thorsten Fass, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University. Regardless of who runs as the candidate, the damage of the fight will still have to be repaired, Professor Fass said. “It is not a good way to start an election year.”Both contenders have said they would like the matter to be decided by the end of the week, and pressure from inside both parties is growing for a quick resolution.Four other political parties are vying to win the most votes on Sept. 26 and seize power by forming a government and naming a chancellor.The center-left Social Democrats, who have been the junior party in Ms. Merkel’s government coalition since 2017, have already named the finance minister and vice-chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as their choice for chancellor. The Greens, currently polling as the second-strongest party ahead of the Social Democrats and close behind the conservatives, are scheduled to announce their candidate on Monday. Not everyone is ready to count out Mr. Laschet yet. He is a politician whose recent successes, winning the governorship of North Rhine-Westphalia over a well-liked incumbent and the monthslong race for the Christian Democrat leadership in January, both saw him grasping victory after coming from behind.Mr. Laschet also has the backing of some of the most senior and influential members of his party, including the former finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who has been around since the first time the conservatives split over a chancellor candidate in 1979.“If Laschet has the nerve and still has his party’s leadership behind him, then Söder could say that he accepts this, then use his position to negotiate a strong minister post for his party in a potential future government,” said Ursula Münch, director of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing.On the other hand, if enough pressure from within the party builds on Mr. Laschet, he could concede to Mr. Söder for the sake of the party and the need to move ahead. That would hand the Bavarian leader a victory that would serve to enforce his reputation as a sharp-witted maverick who will change his policies to fit the public mood. As public favor in Bavaria shifted from the far-right Alternative for Germany party to the environmentalist Greens, he abandoned an anti-immigrant stance and embraced a push to save honey bees, to the ire of farmers who have long formed the grass roots of his party.“He is intelligent, quick and rhetorically strong,” Ms. Münch said of Mr. Söder. “He is able to push people into a corner while keeping a back door open for himself, and in that sense, Laschet can’t hold a candle to him.” More

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      Election Year in Germany Kicks Off With Voting in Two States

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutGuidelines After VaccinationAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyElection Year in Germany Kicks Off With Voting in Two StatesRegional governments will be chosen in two southwestern states months before a national vote that is considered wide open after 16 years under Chancellor Angela MerkelPosters for the Rhineland-Palatinate state election, including the incumbent governor, Malu Dreyer of the Social Democrats, right, and Christian Baldauf of the Christian Democratic Union, top left, in Frankenthal, Germany, on Wednesday.Credit…Michael Probst/Associated PressMarch 14, 2021, 5:33 a.m. ETBERLIN — Voters in two southwestern German states are kicking off an election year on Sunday that could change the course of Europe’s largest economy after 16 years under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will be stepping down after a new government is sworn in.The elections in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate are the first in a year that will see voting for new legislators in four more states, and for the country’s Parliament, which will be elected in September.Sunday’s voting is taking place after largely muted election campaigns that were overshadowed by the threat of the coronavirus and by lockdowns. While neither race will serve as a clear bellwether for the fall election, the outcomes could indicate how voters are feeling about the two leading parties, the conservatives and the Greens, and help focus the contest for Ms. Merkel’s replacement.“It is an unbelievably exciting election year,” said Thorsten Faas, a professor of political science at Berlin’s Free University. “A lot is still open, creating the possibility for movement in various directions.”A vaccine rollout stymied by shortages of doses and hampered by bureaucracy is leading many to question the competence of the chancellor’s conservative bloc. Over the past week, revelations have emerged that several conservative lawmakers earned tens of thousands of euros in exchange for arranging the sale of medical-grade masks to municipalities early in the pandemic, when supplies were very tight.Three lawmakers have resigned over the scandal, including a member of the Christian Democratic Union representing a district in Baden-Württemberg. Another lawmaker from the state of Thuringia, as well as a member of the Christian Social Union, the conservative party in the state of Bavaria, also resigned. After the payouts came to light, party leaders required all 240 conservative lawmakers to sign a declaration pledging they hadn’t used their position for financial gain in connection with fighting the pandemic.Even before the scandal broke, the conservatives were struggling in the race in Baden-Württemberg, where a popular incumbent governor for the Greens is seeking a third term in office.For the past five years, Winfried Kretschmann, 72, has led the state through a coalition of his environmental party with the conservative Christian Democrats, and voters are expected to return him to office. Polls in the weeks running up to the vote showed the Greens with the strongest support, between 33 to 35 percent. Mr. Kretschmann campaigned on his personality, under the slogan “You know me,” and promised a continuation of his party’s consensus-seeking policies of the past five years.Winfried Kretschmann, the incumbent governor of Baden-Württemberg state, left, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Heidelberg in 2019.Credit…Daniel Roland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPolls suggest the Christian Democrats in Baden-Württemberg appear poised to take second place, setting the stage for a possible continuation of the current coalition, a combination that many observers consider a possibility for the makeup of the national Parliament.The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is expected to hold onto the roughly 15 percent support that it won in Baden-Württemberg in 2016. Although the regional party has been plagued by internal divisions and strife among its members, it is expected to retain voters who are attracted to its nationalistic, anti-establishment stance.The Coronavirus Outbreak More