Election in Lower Saxony: SPD clearly ahead of CDU – Greens and AfD in double digits

Incumbent Weil’s SPD won the state elections in Lower Saxony by a clear margin from the CDU. The Greens get a record result, but fall short of expectations. The AfD is also growing strongly. The FDP loses – and fears.

Prime Minister Stephan Weil’s ruling SPD remains the strongest political force in Lower Saxony. According to the forecast of Infratest dimap for the ARD it comes to 33.5 percent. So it loses compared to 2017 (36.9 percent), but ends up well ahead of the CDU.

The Social Democrats benefited from the attraction of their top candidate and his office bonus. The 63-year-old Weil has ruled the country for almost ten years. With his solid, somewhat reserved manner, he is well received by many. Although federal political issues such as the energy crisis and inflation dominated the election campaign and satisfaction with the SPD-led federal government declined rapidly, Weil apparently managed to largely keep criticism of the traffic light at bay. It is an SPD election victory against the national trend.

CDU fails again

Lead candidate Bernd Althusmann’s CDU failed to replace the SPD as the strongest force in the country even at the second attempt. The party comes to 27.5 percent and is clearly in second place. Althusmann ran against Weil in 2017, but lost and became Vice Prime Minister and Economics Minister in the grand coalition that followed. Nevertheless, the CDU could not benefit from government participation.

In the election campaign, the CDU tried to score points with criticism of the SPD-led federal government and to turn the vote into a vote on the crisis policy in Berlin. In nuclear policy, the CDU spoke out in favor of leaving the Lingen nuclear power plant in Lower Saxony on the grid beyond 2022, which the SPD and above all the Greens strictly reject.

Green double digits

The Greens can significantly improve their result from 2017 and now come to 14 percent. However, they had meanwhile been in polls at more than 20 percent. But the quarrels at the traffic lights in Berlin and the goofs of the green model minister Robert Habeck, for example with the gas levy, apparently also affected the state Greens. The little-known 36-year-old Julia Willie Hamburg led the Greens through the election campaign, in which they focused entirely on their core issue of climate protection. Now they can have legitimate hopes of being part of the next state government. Preferably with the SPD.

FDP loses, AfD increases significantly

The FDP would also like to govern, but it is still questionable whether it will ever make it back into the state parliament. The forecast sees the liberals around top candidate Stefan Birkner at 5 percent. The party is once again heading for a devastating election result. Already in the votes in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia she had to accept heavy losses, in Saarland she again did not make it into the state parliament.

In Lower Saxony, the FDP launched a second vote campaign in the final spurt of the election campaign and campaigned aggressively for votes from the middle-class camp. But the state party was obviously troubled by the negative national trend and the difficult role that the FDP, with party leader and finance minister Christian Lindner, has in the three-way constellation with the SPD and the Greens.

The AfD can increase significantly. It comes to 11.5 percent, five years ago the party was 6.2 percent. She started with the little-known Stefan Marzischewski-Drewes, who was supposed to reunite the divided state association. The AfD benefited from the great concerns and fears of many people about further price increases and from dissatisfaction with government policy in Berlin. The AfD also made the increasing number of refugees an issue.

Behind the parties is an election campaign that was heavily influenced by the issues of the energy crisis, security of supply, relief and the fear of a further escalation of the Russian war against Ukraine, i.e. all issues on which state politics has only a limited influence.

How it goes on

Stephan Weil is very likely to continue to govern and plan his third term as Prime Minister. His preferred coalition partner is the Greens, with whom he governed from 2013 to 2017. This time, however, they should be much more self-confident in the negotiations. If the FDP does not make it into the state parliament, red-green would have a comfortable majority. But even with the Liberals in Parliament, it would be close enough for the SPD and the Greens.

A traffic light or another grand coalition would also be mathematically possible, but the latter in particular is politically very unlikely.

The fact that the CDU, as the second-placed party, also claims to form a government and is trying to forge an alliance with the Greens and FDP is also considered politically unlikely.

A total of almost 6.1 million people were called to vote. It was the last state election this year.

Berlin looks

Precisely because the state elections were so strongly dominated by federal political issues, the Berlin parties were also looking forward to the results in Hanover. The CDU in particular had also declared the election to be a vote on the crisis policy of the traffic light coalition in the federal government. The election should also play a role for the harmony in the ruling three-way alliance.