After bitter losses in three state elections, the Greens want a fresh start. Baden-Württemberg has been ruled by a Green Prime Minister for 13 years. A special case, a model that continues to move forward?
“We’re really on the way out” – this is how Green Party member Winfried Kretschmann comments on his party’s results in the recent state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. Kretschmann himself represents previously unimagined successes for the Greens: he has been Prime Minister of the Green-led state government in Baden-Württemberg for 13 years, and in a coalition with the CDU for eight years.
The fact that he is perceived by voters as Swabian and down-to-earth seems to have played a large part in the rise of the Greens in Baden-Württemberg – a state that was previously ruled by the CDU for 46 years. But will they be able to repeat the successes in the country? In the polls they were recently at around 20 percent, the CDU – actually junior partner in the coalition – around ten percentage points ahead of them.
In the last state election, the Greens achieved 32.6 percent. In addition, the party will have to run with a new top candidate in the upcoming state elections in 2026 because 76-year-old Winfried Kretschmann has announced his retirement.
Is the traffic light coalition to blame for everything?
Nevertheless, Alexander Maier has not lost his optimism. He once sat for the Greens in the Stuttgart state parliament, and since 2021 the 33-year-old has been mayor of Göppingen – one of a total of nine Green mayors in the country and the youngest incumbent mayor in Germany when he took office.
“I don’t think it’s utopian that we will continue to have the Prime Minister after 2026,” he says. In his view, the poor current survey results are primarily the result of people’s dissatisfaction with the traffic light coalition in Berlin. In the end, it will also depend on who will govern the federal government in 2026. “Of course I don’t wish that we Greens would no longer be there,” he says. “But it is also clear that this tends to be more damaging in a state election.”
Programmatically, it would be important to counteract the bad mood. “We do some of this ourselves,” he is convinced. “We can’t just see the problems, but also the opportunities.” For example, the Greens would have to take a positive approach to the issue of migration. The economy needs workers from abroad. His party should campaign for less bureaucracy, it should stand for a spirit of innovation and promote young companies more. “But that will also cost money,” adds Alexander Maier.
Kretschmann trademark or green trademark?
Others consider the situation of the Greens in Baden-Württemberg to be significantly more difficult. “A lot has to happen for the Greens if the government is to work again in 2026,” says election researcher Frank Brettschneider from the University of Hohenheim. It’s a shame for the Greens that they are perceived as a know-it-all and patronizing party – even in Baden-Württemberg.
Winfried Kretschmann has set himself the goal of pursuing a policy that he himself describes as a “politics of being heard” and of making citizens more involved in decisions. “But this is seen more as Kretschmann’s trademark, not as one of the Greens,” the election researcher is convinced.
Mayor Alexander Maier, on the other hand, hopes that what Winfried Kretschmann has achieved will continue to be credited to the Greens in the future. “His work is considered good by a large part of the population,” he says. In recent years, for example, its state government has campaigned to strengthen local transport. Things were less successful elsewhere.
The expansion of wind power, for example – actually a fundamentally green project – is progressing more slowly in Baden-Württemberg than in other federal states. On the subject of migration, Winfried Kretschmann spoke out in favor of tougher asylum policy, a position that he also represented at a joint appearance with the CDU Prime Minister. Kretschmann, the often conservative Green – an imposition for some on the left, but apparently a model of success with voters in the southwest in the last state elections.
Benefit from Kretschmann’s legacy?
The question will be whether the new top candidate can benefit from Kretschmann’s legacy. It is expected that Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir will lead the Baden-Württemberg Greens in the election campaign – and that he will officially announce this in the coming weeks. “It’s all still hypothetical, but it would bring dynamism to our election campaign,” says Alexander Maier. “He has the potential to pick up the Kretschmann voters.”
Cem Özdemir is also pragmatic and not ideological. He knows the Baden and Swabian soul and openly approached the farmers during the farmers’ protests. That earned him great respect.
Cem Özdemir grew up in Bad Urach, Swabia, and likes to describe himself as an “Anatolian Swabian”. Election researcher Frank Brettschneider doubts that this will help him much. “Many still see him primarily as a representative of Berlin’s political celebrities,” he points out. And: It is questionable anyway whether there will ultimately be an election campaign that is primarily about the personal qualities of the top candidates. “I think a debate about issues is more likely,” believes Brettschneider.
In this case, the Greens in Baden-Württemberg should not even try to turn Özdemir into a new version of Kretschmann. Instead, the “Kretschmann trademark” would have to become a green trademark as quickly as possible.