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VArmin Laschet really didn’t want to know anything about a test election for his ambitions as a candidate for the CDU presidency and the chancellor run. But that could not be missing: the SPD surpassed, its CDU, on the other hand, confirmed with the good result of 2014, the Greens, as expected, on the rise. The result of the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia almost seems a reflection of the polls at the federal level. For Laschet it is now something of a small state election.
In fact, it can be assumed that federal bias and state policy had an impact on this election in the days of Corona. After all, it is rare for a national political issue to dominate everyday community life in such a sustainable way. Laschet and the CDU local councils benefited from the tailwind that nearly every state CDU association has felt since the start of the Corona crisis.
At NRW, however, the CDU’s bar is very high anyway. It has been the dominant force in local politics for a long time. But now something else was added. In the federal government, the CDU boom is backed by a Merkel bond. The CDU of North Rhine-Westphalia uses this, on the one hand, because its president is a Merkel man. Of all things, he had a mind of his own when it came to Corona politics. Laschet wanted to relax, Merkel didn’t.
Laschet was able to savor the result as “his” success with more delight and ignore the stain, the slight losses compared to 2014. The municipal elections show that his policy of smoothing the situation is being honored with a sense of proportion, the policy of “Measure and a half.” “Everyone at the CDU understands that an intermediate course is the right thing to do,” he added on television that night, a message for his competitors for the party presidency, Norbert Röttgen and Friedrich Merz. In the coming days and weeks Laschet will have another message prepared for the delegates of the Stuttgart CDU party congress: With him, the CDU could win the elections.
Local elections in NRW
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Winners and losers at a glance
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Video: AFP, Image: dpa
Another low blow for the SPD
Apparently no one in the SPD can do that at the moment. The success of the CDU is a disappointing defeat for the Social Democrats, especially in terms of national politics. Olaf Scholz’s candidacy for Chancellor was not to be expected to give wings to the SPD again in the Rhine and Ruhr regions; local elections are too far removed from the federal government and federal elections for that.
But at least party chairman Norbert Walter-Borjans, a former North Rhine-Westphalia finance minister, could have had a positive effect. Waiting for it speaks more to the SPD’s perplexity than its sense of reality. The main reason for the weak result (ten percentage points behind the CDU) is likely to be the exhausted and faltering state SPD, for which inexplicable leadership is symptomatic.
The defeat of the SPD could even be overlooked in the face of the federal government: the party is still above the federal trend, after all, and SPD state chairman Sebastian Hartmann consoled it with the observation that at least it had came out better than the European elections. This is how the SPD has arrived: to process low blows, it is geared towards catastrophes. To avoid this at NRW, she will have to save her mayoral positions in Dortmund and Düsseldorf in the second round elections.
After all, the SPD remained stronger than the Greens, who are on track to at least catch up with the Social Democrats in the cities and in the federal government. The success of the Greens reminds us that this election was about things other than Corona: traffic, rentals, schools, but mostly traffic. Climate policy is back.
The Greens are still missing the trophy, the mayor’s office in one of the big cities, but in many city parliaments they are the second strongest or even strongest parliamentary group. The black-green coalitions will accumulate in the local councils. In many cases, the Greens and the SPD alone are too weak to form majorities to the left of the CDU, as in the past. This will also have an impact at the state level.
Laschet’s coalition partner, the FDP, can see all this with a shrug. The FDP was never a local political power, and at least it was able to improve its results.
It is notable, however, that the FDP (and the Left Party) remained behind the AfD. This is a distorted picture because it reflects the national average, but the AfD can only show successes in individual cities like Duisburg, Gelsenkirchen or Mülheim, where immigration plays a bigger role than elsewhere. Also in this respect, the election of NRW is a mirror of the federal government: where there is dissatisfaction, the AfD can offer a weak image, it will continue to be elected as a protest party.
