Already early on Sunday morning, when Andreas Bovenschulte casts his vote in a polling station, he looks happy. He believes, as the 57-year-old says in the cameras, that his party can once again become the strongest force in the smallest federal state. As it will turn out later, the incumbent and SPD top candidate was right. At 6:12 p.m., Bovenschulte comes to the SPD election party, when the cheering breaks out in the “Ständig Representation”, a bar near the town hall.
“The number one in Bremen – that’s us,” shouts the man, whom everyone here calls “Bovi”, applause and cheers break out. “I will continue to be mayor, we have been given a clear government mandate,” Bovenschulte calls out to his comrades. In Bremen, however, he wanted to continue “making politics for all people, including those who didn’t vote for me.” He promises to “keep an eye on the whole country”.
The SPD is the clear winner in the Bremen state elections. According to the forecast, the SPD won 30 percent and thus 5.1 percent more than in 2019 – and that is also due to an election campaign that was completely tailored to Bovenschulte. “Bovi-Power for Bremen” was his slogan, and the analyzes of the survey institutes show that it caught on. 76 percent of the citizens attest to Bovenschulte’s good work, 60 percent also want him as the future head of government in the city-state – and they will get him. Forming a government without the SPD is not possible – which, given the disgrace of four years ago, is not a matter of course.
In 2019, for the first time in the history of the state of Bremen, the CDU was ahead. However, the second-placed SPD had entered into an alliance with the Greens and the Left, the “R2G”, and was thus able to hold on to power. This coalition is also possible in the future: according to the forecast, the SPD, Greens and Left Party in Bremen will have 49 seats in the parliament, 44 are enough for the majority. Although Bovenschulte said he could imagine a continuation of this coalition, he announced that he also wanted to speak to the CDU. You have to see: “What are the challenges and who can best shoulder them together?”
Bovenschulte announced that in the future he and his party would like to focus even more on the issues of business and work. This is “the basis for creating social cohesion and being able to finance other policy areas,” said Bovenschulte, whose central campaign promise was “to make Bremen the most business-friendly and at the same time the most employee-friendly state in the republic”. His government had already started doing this over the past four years: In no other federal state was economic growth as high as in Bremen in 2022. But what is also true: nowhere else in Germany are there so many children threatened by poverty.
The CDU had repeatedly accused Bovenschulte of such abuses during the election campaign, but the top candidate Frank Imhoff was apparently unable to score points with them. The Christian Democrats come to 24.5 percent. Imhoff said the CDU missed its election goal. He aggressively offered Bovenschulte a grand coalition. The 54-year-old farmer and President of the Bremen Parliament competed in a team with 27-year-old Wiebke Winter, who is known as “Luisa Neubauer of the CDU” because she is primarily involved in climate policy and should appeal to young voters.
The Greens are the clear losers with only twelve percent; In 2019 they were still more than 17 percent. Green top candidate Maike Schaefer said: “We don’t have to sugarcoat the fact that the 13 percent is a disappointing result for us.” Among other things, she blames the “lack of tailwind from Berlin”. The left got eleven percent, which is a success given the poor results in other states and in the federal government. According to the first forecast, the right-wing populist voters’ association “Bürger in Wut” came to 10.5 percent; That’s eight percent more than in 2019. The FDP is five percent and has to worry about moving in – concerns are those that are foreign to the election winner Bovenschulte through and through.
On Friday afternoon, this Bovenschulte was still standing on the stage in Bremen’s market square, a microphone in his hand. Bovenschulte sang “Stand by me” in front of 1,500 people, one of whom was a certain Olaf Scholz, who clapped to the beat. There were still two days before the election, and SPD party leader Lars Klingbeil accompanied Bovenschulte on the guitar in a white shirt. It was expressly not one of those moments in which you are ashamed as a spectator: the two knew what they were doing. Before his political career, Bovenschulte traveled through the provinces as a “Mucker”, playing guitar, bass and singing. Lower Saxony’s SPD Prime Minister Stephan Weil started dancing next to Scholz. The mood in the SPD could hardly have been better on Friday afternoon – on Sunday there was confirmation. “We’ve won again,” says a comrade on Sunday evening at the polling station, grinning into his cell phone.
In Bremen, the SPD governs longer than the CSU in Bavaria
The sun burned down on the historic market square in Bremen on Friday, and the snipers on the roof of the town hall wore dark glasses. It was the final sprint for the incumbent and top candidate Bovenschulte before the election – and the SPD had sent its most prominent support for it. Bremen has been in the hands of the SPD since 1946; the Social Democrats have ruled there longer than the CSU in Bavaria.
The polls had already seen the lawyer Bovenschulte far ahead of his challenger from the CDU. Frank Imhoff could not keep up with Bovenschulte’s popularity ratings.
“R2G” reigned almost silently
For the past four years, the Bremen coalition called “R2G” has governed the smallest federal state almost silently.
But there is also criticism, you could not only see that on Friday. A handful of troublemakers had gathered on Bremen’s market square behind the barriers at the SPD event. They kept yelling towards the stage “Scholz has to go”, “warmonger” and “liar”, from another corner a man kept shouting: “Where is my climate chancellor?” Scholz had opposed his opponents energetically and, by his standards, had passionately defended German support for Ukraine with arms after the Russian war of aggression. After the victory in Bremen, the chancellor should be satisfied too.