The whole republic is looking to Munich, again. Markus Söder wants to become the Union’s candidate for chancellor, maybe that’s why he quotes two chancellors on this April day in the CSU party headquarters. “There is strength in calm,” he says, referring to Angela Merkel. And: “What matters is what comes out at the back”, without naming the author Helmut Kohl. It is these K-fight weeks in which Söder often feels like the candidate for chancellor, possibly like half a chancellor.
What no one in the CSU has achieved, not even Franz Josef Strauss and Edmund Stoiber, is within reach. Söder is the king of surveys and sees himself as the spearhead of the young, modern and future-oriented. There is still a lot left of the huge executive bonus that Corona crisis manager Söder accumulates in the first year of the pandemic. If there were now a state election, the CSU would get 40 percent and more, the institutes report in the first few months of 2021. The CSU as a conceivable chancellor party, as a nationwide pacemaker. It just comes out, reference Helmut Kohl, something else at the back – in the candidate selection as in the federal election in September.
Worst result in 72 years
On the evening of the election, in the party headquarters, where the vigorous Söder posed in the spring, a contrite General Secretary Markus Blume speaks of a result that “could not be entirely satisfactory”. A huge whitewash, measured by the numbers: 31.7 percent in Bavaria. The worst CSU result in 72 years. Triumph and disaster, both were close together for the CSU this year. At the end of it, the party wonders how all of this could happen and whether something worse is about to happen. There will be state elections in less than two years. Outlook? Uncertain. The latest poll, which was still colored by the election, predicted the CSU 32 percent. For the proud party it would be a catastrophe, for party leader Söder it would be the political end.
The internal party election analysis will not be completed in December 2021, but there is broad consensus on some points. Practically everyone in the CSU agrees that a candidate Söder would have drawn more votes for the Union than CDU candidate Armin Laschet. However, also in the fact that Laschet would have done better if Söder hadn’t bullied him all the time, keyword “sleeping car”. Indeed, Blume had called on his election campaigners to diligently paper Laschet posters, “we won’t let anyone accuse us of that”. In fact, however, there were regions in which the candidate was barely visible or where the base “Armin” wanted to leave behind. It wasn’t until September, at the party convention in Nuremberg, that something like euphoria could be observed in the CSU. Although the pop star reception for Laschet was a bit too thick to be completely believable.
When doing election analysis, one encounters even more homemade problems. The mask affair, of course, which cost a lot of trust. In addition, Söder had focused on the Greens as an opponent early on, had his CSU thematically greened – and thus lost sight of the SPD, which ended up in second place in Bavaria (18 percent), clearly ahead of the Greens. Even the hearty “red sock campaign” that Söder ignited in the final sprint could not prevent this. He warned of a “left slide” by a red-green-red alliance, in front of the traffic light as a “diluted left soup”. A multi-page call for elections by the CSU executive board outlined that a “left slide” would virtually bring the country to ruin. A tone that suddenly no longer sounded modern and future-oriented. The CSU shifted almost completely to attacking its opponents. Because it had little to offer in terms of content, say Söder’s critics.
Critics see the CSU regular clientele overwhelmed
Many in the CSU are of the opinion that their boss, with his resolution to make the party younger, greener and more modern, overwhelmed the regular clientele and drove them into the arms of others. In Eastern Bavaria, but not only there, the Free Voters performed well, the AfD also achieved regional successes, and the FDP in general. Classically deep black, rural regions have confirmed their CSU direct candidates, but in some cases put a significant damper on them. Does the party need a clear course correction with a view to the state elections in 2023? Söder denies this, but everyone can now hear that the CSU is again emphasizing its conservative issues. In drug policy, immigration, and abortion law. In terms of federal politics, Munich has meanwhile degenerated into a sideline, all eyes are on the traffic lights.
The CSU strategists know that simply continuing the left-slide campaign will not be enough. And are looking for a new narrative for the 2023 election in order to make the party’s profile more tangible again – as CSU boss Stoiber managed with “laptop and leather pants”. The federal election was a memorandum, the state election, according to Horst Seehofer the “mother of all battles”, will be no less than a fateful day for the CSU. The countdown has started.