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In addition to the federal election on September 26, there will also be two state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on this day. Marco Bitschnau gives an outlook on the vote in Berlin, where the German Social Democrats now have the lead in the polls after a late surge in support.
It’s mid-September and all eyes in Germany are on the upcoming federal election. And for good reason, you have to say: In contrast to previous years, the 2021 election campaign season was a rollercoaster ride with the rise of the German Greens and the election of Annalena Baerbock as the first Green candidate for Chancellor; a dramatic competition between CDU boss Armin Laschet and his popular CSU colleague Markus Söder for the joint CDU / CSU ticket; and finally the upswing of the SPD, which has been declared dead several times, which is now experiencing a resurrection of almost biblical proportions.
After Baerbock and Laschet were embroiled in scandals, SPD top candidate Olaf Scholz, a center-left pragmatist who took over the (largely symbolic) role of Vice Chancellor in 2018, quickly gained popularity and trust. Only recently pityed as the four-year-old sacrificial lamb of his party, he suddenly has a real chance to succeed Angela Merkel and bring sixteen years of center-right hegemony at the federal level to an unexpected end.
But while the question of whether Scholz can do this is soaking up the public’s attention like a sponge, two state elections that will take place on the day of the Bundestag election (September 26) are receiving far less attention. One will be in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany’s most rural and poorly populated Flat land (Area), where the SPD of incumbent Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig has a comfortable lead of around twenty to twenty-five points over the CDU and the far-right AfD.
With nothing to suggest any excitement, the only relevant question concerns the performance of the Greens. You failed to get into the state parliament last time, and some polls bring you dangerously close to the 5% threshold again. The battle for second place, on the other hand, is of limited importance and should only have a cosmetic impact on the balance of power in the state capital Schwerin.
The result of the Berlin state elections will be of greater interest. In contrast to many of its more glamorous competitors, Berlin is not just a city or a district, but a fully fledged state, the head of which bears the title of “governing mayor†and has the same rights and duties as any prime minister.
The mayor’s office has been held by the SPD without interruption for two decades – first by Klaus Wowereit, who became known as one of the country’s first openly gay politicians, then by Michael Müller, whose style of government was less colorful and whose term of office was less memorable than that of his charismatic predecessor . After almost seven years at the top, he will (somewhat surprisingly) turn his back on city politics and run for parliament, paving the way for the SPD top candidate Franziska Giffey to succeed him and become the capital’s first female mayor.
Increasing support for the SPD
Like Schwesig in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Giffey is a former family minister who left federal politics to run for a top position at state level. But unlike the former, it also brings unwanted luggage to the competition. In June, the Free University of Berlin withdrew her doctorate from Giffey after a plagiarism scandal, which also triggered her resignation from the cabinet.
Her diploma thesis has also come under fire, her statement on deportations to Syria and Afghanistan (she was the first prominent SPD politician to speak out in favor) drew the anger of the party left and her clear car-friendly positions irritated many city-dwellers who are enthusiastic about bicycles. Nevertheless, Giffey remains the clear favorite. Riding on Scholz’s skirts – whom she recently introduced as the “next governing mayor of Berlin†during an election campaign freeze – and benefiting from her high level of awareness, she worked out a healthy SPD leadership in the surveys in August and early September This tour has held the party since July 2018.
While the SPD has risen steadily in Berlin, the Greens have lost around ten percentage points in less than four months and are now on the verge of turning a certain victory into another frustrating defeat. Led by the former journalist Bettina Jarasch, the party had hoped to dethrone the SPD leader Peter Tschentscher in the Hamburg state elections in 2020 and to win the second leadership of a state government in the party’s history.
Now that prospect is getting smaller by the day, as are the chances of the left (The left), whose candidate Klaus Lederer was recently hailed by a hundred prominent artists as the “best senator of culture (i.e. minister of state) of all time”, but did not translate this enthusiasm into concrete support. In fact, the party’s polls three weeks before the election are worse than ever since 2015, partly because it is still split into a communitarian-isolationist and a cosmopolitan-universalist wing, but partly also because of the unpredictability of the SPD’s revival.
Among the three opposition parties, the CDU seems to be relatively well positioned – especially in comparison to the poor performance of the federal party. While their top candidate Kai Wegner is unlikely to win, he got most things right and can expect a good enough result to cement his party’s position. With a little luck and enough participation on election day, he could even reach second place. The FDP, under the leadership of Sebastian Czaja, is also floating a few points above the 2016 result, following the federal party’s positive trend.
Last but not least, the AfD is as isolated as ever. Your state party in Berlin and top candidate Kristin Brinker are considered less radical rhetoric than their Brandenburg neighbors. Even so, the polls are slightly lower than last time, and the party is still pursuing a fundamental opposition strategy, but remains completely irrelevant to the process of forming a government.
A “Germany coalition†in Berlin?
Regardless of the winner, there is little doubt that the current coalition of the SPD, the Left and the Greens (known as the “Red-Red-Green Coalition” or R2G) will retain its majority. However, it is less clear whether the parties involved want to continue their cooperation. The left is obviously doing this because it lacks other realistic options for power, and the Greens – who are much more left in Berlin than at the federal level – would have nothing against a continuation, ideally under their leadership.
From the SPD and especially from Giffey himself, however, more mixed messages came, with experts speculating that they might be inclined to instead form a so-called “Germany coalition†with the CDU and FDP. This would be the first such alliance at the state level since 1959 and, in the context of state politics, a power shift from the inner-city districts to the more conservative peripheral districts. It would also weaken the position of the left in the eastern federal states and with it the prospects for future R2G alliances.
In short, Berlin is always good for a surprise, but it seems reasonable to expect an SPD victory and the political rehabilitation of Franziska Giffey. The election campaign of the Greens has clearly lost momentum in the last few weeks and the party could face another setback in the form of an SPD change to a more centered government. Together with the threat of Scholz’s chancellorship, this could be interpreted as a reversal of the left-wing course that the party has taken in recent years but largely failed to take. Schröder’s undercurrents in the SPD have never completely disappeared, and now they could be ready for a return – both in the Red townhall from Berlin and in the Federal Chancellery.
Note: This article reflects the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Photo credit: Markus Spiske at Unsplash
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