The fate of the meerkats in Hellabrunn Zoo temporarily pushed the general election out of the news at the weekend. On the SZ homepage, the tragic death of the four animals occasionally interested more readers than the election analyzes of Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet’s ambitions for chancellor. The meerkats show once again that animals and animal welfare are emotionally hard to beat; and it has long been an issue in politics.
The Animal Welfare Party, which campaigns against factory farming among other things, achieved a strong result for its standards in this election. 2055 citizens gave her the second vote in the district. The direct candidate of the Animal Welfare Party, Manfred Kellberger, was even ahead of Yannick Rouault from the ÖDP with 1.3 percent of the first votes, who got 1.1 percent. And that, although environmental issues, for which the ÖDP stands, are also pulling.
In Katinka Burz, their district councilor from Kirchheim, the Greens even had their own direct candidate. Still, it didn’t help the party.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
For months, Yannick Rouault put professional and private interests aside for the election campaign and produced his own election podcast. The Ottobrunner explains the small effect by the fact that many who did not exactly pursue special interests would have chosen tactically this time: that is, with government constellations in the back of their minds. The Greens and the SPD would have benefited from it.
The best way to assess the relative importance of small parties is to look at the absolute number of voters. In percentage points, they are often in the barely perceptible range for the second votes. For example, 2799 voters in the district gave their vote to the “Die Basis” party, which was founded just over a year ago and which gives many critics of the corona measures a home; for comparison: 1331 second votes were for the meanwhile established ÖDP. If you add up the votes for the animal rights activists and the base protest party, both parties in the Munich district even have greater support than the left, who have pretty much fallen in favor of the voters. 4854 people felt addressed either by animal welfare or the corona protests. The left, which has been advocating social justice for decades, only garnered 4,449 second votes. The housing shortage in the district would have been a topic with which the party could score.
But the left slipped into the vicinity of the small parties in some municipalities this Sunday. In some municipalities such as Baierbrunn, Aying, Grünwald and Straßlach-Dingharting, it is just over one percent. It didn’t help that the left had their own direct candidate for their campaign in District Councilor Katinka Burz. The animal welfare party and “Die Basis” also had their own local applicants in Manfred Kellberger and Stefan Rode. Of course, none of the three could be seen at panel discussions. Campaign activities were limited due to the corona.
The same applies to Stefanie Ruck (Bavarian Party) and Bernhard Senft (Die Party), whose parties, with 0.4 and 0.6 percent of the second vote, achieved poor results in the district, as expected. The candidates remained pale, they and their parties obviously lacked the issues that bind voters.
But what went wrong with the left? On the one hand, there is the negative national trend. Katinka Burz admits that the left has little roots in the affluent district. In addition, the election campaign suffered from the fact that, unlike four years ago, as a candidate, because of her poor position on the list, she had no option for a Bundestag mandate. Eva-Maria Schreiber entered the Bundestag in 2017 for the Left from the constituency. This time she ran in Regensburg and missed the move because of the poor result.
The AfD is not yet ranked among the small parties in the district. But it slipped from 9.4 to 5.3 percent of the second vote. In Pullach it came to 3.2 percent, in Straßlach-Dingharting and Oberhaching to 3.9 percent. But the rights also lost in the more urban communities. Especially in cities and municipalities with many well-to-do parties, parties from the left and right fringes find few supporters. As the director of the Political Academy Tutzing, Ursula Münch, said of the SZ, the offers of the left and the AfD are less entangled with a privileged and educated population. According to Gerold Otten, the AfD candidate, his party lacked the hot topic. But he moves back into the Bundestag via the state list.