According to an initial forecast, the SPD will be by far the strongest force in the state elections in Lower Saxony. According to the research group Wahlen, the party of the incumbent Prime Minister Stephan Weil received around 32.5 percent of the votes. The CDU is therefore the second strongest force and should be 27.5 percent. The Greens can increase their result compared to the last state election in 2017, 14.5 percent are predicted. The AfD ends up at twelve percent, the FDP has to worry about entering the state parliament. The left fails at the five percent hurdle.
So far, Prime Minister Weil had governed in a grand coalition with the CDU. Their top candidate, Bernd Althusmann, had last served as Economics Minister in the state cabinet. Both parties saw the grand coalition as an alliance of convenience that they wanted to end after the election if possible.
Weil’s goal is to forge a new red-green alliance. It is currently unclear whether this will be enough. He had already governed with the Greens from 2013 to 2017, before the coalition lost its majority because a Green MP had defected to the CDU. If it is not enough for red-green, a traffic light alliance would also be conceivable if the FDP makes it into the state parliament. Challenger Althusmann, on the other hand, had speculated on two alliance options, a grand coalition under his leadership or a black-green alliance. According to the first forecasts, these two variants are not possible.
The election in the country with around eight million inhabitants also has an impact on federal politics. The election campaign was dominated by the big federal political issue these days, the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine and the question of what help the federal government is providing for citizens and companies. In view of the crisis, the traffic light coalition in Berlin had launched several relief packages with a total volume of 295 billion euros. At the same time, the government had made mistakes, for example with the failed gas levy. Against this background, the CDU had also declared the state elections to be a vote on the federal government’s crisis policy.
The elections in Lower Saxony are also of great interest to the SPD chancellor party because they did poorly in the previous state elections this year. Only in Saarland was it the strongest party and was able to appoint the prime minister. In Schleswig-Holstein and in the former social democratic stronghold of North Rhine-Westphalia, on the other hand, there were clear defeats. A victory in Lower Saxony would also give the party a little breathing room in the federal government. In the polls it was around 18 percent there, well below its result in the federal election.
In the afternoon, turnout in Lower Saxony was about the same as in the last state election in 2017. At that time, 63.1 percent went to the polls. The lowest voter turnout was found in Lower Saxony in 2008 at 57.1 percent.