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That morning, Armin Laschet went to vote in his hometown of Aachen. So the prime minister said what was said in a local election. It is “primarily a volunteer option.”
By Sunday night, however, Laschet’s field had already changed a bit. Relieved, he appeared before the media in Düsseldorf and declared: “Today we can say: the CDU has won these elections.” Laschet smiled, the relief evident.
After all, the outcome was by no means certain: In recent months, Laschet had sometimes not shown a happy figure in the crown pandemic, while approval ratings for Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) reached. highs across the country and this fueled speculation about his candidacy for chancellor.
But on the Sunday of local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Laschet was able to take a short break from the competition to get to the top. About 36 percent had decided in favor of their party in early screenings, the CDU far ahead of the weakened SPD and the Greens, in third place, who won significantly.
It’s not a heady result for Laschet, whose CDU is just ahead of the worst local election result in the 1952 NRW at 35.6 percent. But tonight it wasn’t about historical comparisons. Especially since this local election in Laschet’s homeland also passed the practical test in the days of Corona, with long lines, a high percentage of votes by mail and, in the end, with a slightly higher electoral turnout (around 51.5 per cent) than in 2014.
Laschet knew there was more to it than that: in his statement, he did not forget to mention that the last election took place in North Rhine-Westphalia this year and, with 14 million citizens entitled to vote, the “largest election of 2020.”
It was still a local election, where the personalities of the candidates often make a difference, not infrequently beyond the preferences of the party. But for Laschet the result came at the right time: two and a half months before the CDU’s federal party convention, in which he competes against Friedrich Merz and Norbert Röttgen for the party presidency and therefore fights for a possible preliminary decision on the chancellor candidacy.
FDP head of state Joachim Stamp, who ruled with Laschet in the federal government’s only black-yellow coalition, said this was also a problem in North Rhine-Westphalia. During the course of the evening, his Liberals found themselves just over the five percent hurdle. The “Chancellor’s discussions on Armin Laschet,” the Deputy Prime Minister explained about his party’s modest performance in the WDR, “naturally overlapped” with these local elections.
Saskia Esken: “Of course, a disappointing result”
The result was a disappointment for the SPD, which once dominated the most populous country in the republic. But the “SPD heart chamber” has stopped beating for a long time. In Dortmund, where she has been mayor for 74 years, incumbent Thomas Westphal clearly defended her position despite losses, but, as SPD mayor of Düsseldorf Thomas Geisel, she is due to be in a second round on September 27 against a CDU. Challenger.
Westphal wanted nothing to do with a “historic defeat.” “We are defending our position here,” he said in the WDR, involuntarily describing the situation of the social democracy. What it says: There are no gains in sight overall.
The diversity in the SPD was remarkable on election night: while NRW head of state Sebastian Hartmann was pleased that his party landed against the Greens with around 23 percent and said they had “changed the game. trend “, different tones could be heard in Berlin. .
Because just as the result for the possible CDU chancellor candidate in spe Laschet should not at least weaken his position in the power struggle within the party, the SPD results on Sunday could exacerbate the question of whether the staff in the top is the right one to win the federal election campaign. Punctuation. For the SPD duo of leaders Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, NRW was also a test pick. And it was well below expectations, with losses of almost eight percent. After all, Esken didn’t overlook anything at ZDF – his group had wished for a better performance, which was “of course a disappointing result.”
Green OB candidates go to second round in Bonn and Aachen
And the others? While the AfD clearly fell short of its ten percent electoral target and only overcame the five percent hurdle over the course of election night, while the left remained far below, the exuberant cheers could only be seen in the television that night among the Greens. . They gained 6.4 per cent in North Rhine-Westphalia and reached 18 per cent and thus third nationally behind the SPD.
In the big cities of the country, the Green candidates achieved good results: in Bonn, for example, Mayor Ashok-Alexander Sridharan (CDU) had to go to a second round, although he obtained 34.46 percent of the votes, the Green candidate got 27.59 percent. Katja Dörner but in second place.
The Greens were also happy in Cologne: in the city hall, they are expected to be the strongest force at 29 percent, ahead of the SPD and CDU (both around 20 percent), where independent mayor Henriette Reker (around 45 percent) will be in a runoff election against SPD challenger Andreas. Kossiski (about 27 percent) goes.
Saskia Esken, president of the SPD, in early September in North Rhine-Westphalia: more expected
Photo: Florian Gaertner / photothek.net / imago images / photothek
The Greens also applauded in Dortmund. Former country chief Daniela Schneckenburger drove nearly 21 percent and came in third. The fact that CDU runner-up Andreas Hollstein (about 26 percent) stopped by the Greens on election night in Dortmund and thanked them for the fair election campaign is a sign of the second round two weeks from now. In the local town hall, theoretically a black-green majority would be possible, because the Greens also grew strongly here and pushed behind the SPD. Now it’s the voters’ job to jointly replace the SPD’s supremacy in the city, according to Hollstein, who hopes to defeat SPD Chairman Westphal with green votes in the second round.
The success of the Greens on election night could not be statistically overlooked elsewhere either. In the group of 16-24 year olds eligible to vote in local elections in NRW, it was 33 percent, well ahead of the CDU with 22 percent and the SPD with 16 percent, and the FDP at minus eight percent. Even if this age group is not decisive due to demographics, it is still a sign, especially since Greens also increased in the oldest age groups up to 50. In contrast, Greens only ranked third among those over 60 years, with CDU and SPD scoring here.
At the end of a long election night, the Greens were also allowed to win a point in the OB elections in Laschet’s hometown of Aachen – their candidate Sibylle Keupen got 39 percent, ahead of CDU’s Harald Baal. with about 24 percent. For the Greens, this is a good sign for the second round of the elections on September 27.
Note: Individual results may change over the course of the night, especially due to the high number of postal voters in this NRW municipal election.
