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Six state elections, the federal election, various party leaders and candidates for chancellor: there are many historic decisions to be made in 2021. The CDU will begin in mid-January.
By Franka Welz, ARD capital studio
It all starts with a choice of leadership: after a long delay, the CDU will have a new president in mid-January. Three men from North Rhine-Westphalia want the job: the prime minister of the most populous federal state, Armin Laschet, the returned politician Friedrich Merz, and Norbert Röttgen, a foreign politician and former federal minister for the environment. This choice is about “the soul of the CDU”, not only finds Röttgen.
But, of course, it is also about power politics, power options. The orientation of the content of the CDU also depends on the question of leadership, and this is likely to have an impact on future political alliances at the federal level. Many there see the moment for black and green, but whether that will also work with each of the possible candidates for Chancellor of the Union is another question.
It would have worked with Angela Merkel, but she announced her departure from federal politics about two years ago after the end of this legislative term. In the fall, the Merkel era will end, and therein lies a moment of truth for the Union that no one at the federal level can ignore right now. 2021 should show how strong the foundation of the survey’s good results is or how important Merkel’s involvement really is.
The Greens are pushing for power
Spring should give the first clues. In March, elections will be held in Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg. In the Ländle, the Greens want to secure their power, but they have many more plans: “Let’s make 2021 the beginning of a new era,” Greens co-chair Annalena Baerbock said at the federal delegates’ conference in November. The Greens want to get out of the opposition, preferably directly to the Chancellery, but at least to the government bench. If that works or if the smallest opposition faction in the Bundestag in 2021, as so often at the federal level, falls short of your expectations, the 2021 super election year will tell.
Because after the double election in March, there will be a vote in Thuringia in April, in June in Saxony-Anhalt and in the autumn the federal elections, as well as the elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Change of power in the Left Party
The Left Party is likely to look primarily at Thuringia; Here Bodo Ramelow, the republic’s only left-wing prime minister, is fighting for his position in the state chancery. But February is already pointing the way for the party: then the leader of the Hessian parliamentary group, Janine Wissler, and the head of the state of Thuringia, Susanne Henning-Wellsow, want to take over the leadership of the Left Party as a dual leadership. . It remains to be seen whether the two unequal women will lead the left towards the ability to govern (keyword red-red-green) or continue to view them as an opposition party.
Lindner’s moment of truth
The FDP is different. She wants to co-rule. For party leader Christian Lindner, the year promises to be a very personal moment of truth, as he linked his party’s presidency in the liberal party’s federal congress in September with the aim of wanting to bring the FDP “to government” and he emphasized that it was him. “very serious” about it. Four years ago, Lindner’s FDP broke off talks about a “Jamaica coalition” with the CDU and the Greens at the last minute, a decision that still affects him today.
The SPD already has a K candidate
And then there is the SPD, currently the Union’s junior partner in an unloved grand coalition. The Social Democrats are the only party that has a candidate for chancellor; they are sending a proven force in Olaf Scholz on the run: the vice chancellor and federal finance minister have a demonstrative will to win, regardless of the consistently poor numbers in their party’s polls. “I want to win,” he says.
Scholz is well known, popular with the population, and as things stand so far, he would be the only acting federal chancellor candidate; a coalition led by the SPD is currently difficult to imagine mathematically.
Where is the AfD headed?
Unusual government alliances cannot be ruled out in 2021, yet the now-established six-party system makes it possible. With one exception: no one wants to work with the AfD at the federal level. And that’s unlikely to change at the moment, although AfD federal spokesman Jörg Meuthen is demonstratively trying to give the far-right party a bourgeois paint and make it look like a “normal” conservative party to the right of the Union.
For months, a leadership war has raged in the AfD: Meuthen’s so-called moderate camp against supporters of the far-right “wing” around Björn Höcke. It is not clear who will win this fight for power within the party. But it depends on how the AfD’s participation in the votes develops and if there can be a rapprochement with the Union at the federal level in the medium term. However, that in turn also depends on where the future leader of the CDU leads his party. In this sense, the 2021 super election year could point the way in many ways.
