Elections in North Rhine Westphalia could bring tensions in Berlin | ING Economics

The elections in North Rhine Westphalia were the most important in Germany this year, not only bringing the second defeat in a week for chancellor Olaf Scholz but also a comeback for what Germans call ‘Volksparteien’ (people’s parties).
German SPD leader Olaf Scholz
On Sunday, 13 million German were eligible to vote in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, the country’s most populous state. As so often in the past, state elections are affected by both national and regional factors, issues and politicians. Very often election losers blame ‘Berlin’ for their losses, while winners see their own regional strength as the reason for victory. In Sunday’s elections, it is fair to say that war in Ukraine and the federal government’s performance since the September elections clearly left their mark.
According to the projections at 9pm CET, the CDU of incumbent state premier Hendrik Wüst has come in as largest party with 35 percent of the votes; up 2 percentage points from the last elections in 217. The SPD recorded its worst result since the end of World War II, coming in at 27.5%. The biggest election winners were the Greens, rising to 18.5%, from 6.4% in 2017. In contrast, the FDP, which has governed North Rhine-Westphalia in a coalition with the CDU, is projected come in at just above 5%, from 13% in 2017.
With these results, the current CDU/FDP government can no longer stay in government. A coalition of CDU and Greens looks most likely, even if a coalition of the SPD and Greens could currently also be possible.
Already last week, the elections in the much smaller state of Schleswig Holstein brought a painful defeat for Olaf Scholz’s SPD. The CDU’s votes went up by 11.4 percentage points to 43.4%, while the SPD’s votes went down by the same amount to 16%. The Greens also improved their popular vote, while the FDP’s votes collapsed.
Even though these were ‘only’ two regional state elections, there are a few observations which could shape German politics and policies in the coming months:
The good thing for the federal government is that the next regional state elections will only come in October (in Lower Saxony). The two recent elections will not go down well, at least not with two of the three coalition partners in Berlin. This does not mean that there could be a government crisis any time soon. Not with less than one year in office. But the pressure to sharpen each party’s profile will increase and this by nature will eventually increase tensions in any three-party-coalition.
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Politics Germany Eurozone Elections
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