analysis
As of: 05/08/2022 6:43 p.m
The great success of the CDU has less to do with political issues and more to do with one person: Prime Minister Günther. The result is not just a triumph for the CDU in Schleswig-Holstein.
It’s not just a triumph for the CDU in Schleswig-Holstein. The whole party should be happy because it has been 16 years since they achieved a result of this magnitude. At that time, Günther Oettinger received more than 44 percent of the votes in Baden-Württemberg.
And this success has less to do with political issues and more to do with a single figure: Prime Minister Daniel Günther was the decisive reason for more than half of the Union voters to check the party. The so-called candidate factor is 55 in the preliminary evaluation – for 55 percent of CDU voters, the candidate was more important than the program or a long-term party commitment. That’s one of the best person values since Infratest dimap started asking this question in 2000.
Bad mobilization of the SPD
The forecast also confirms a pattern that was not consistent in the last state elections, but was observed more frequently: Strong leaders can gain significant approval in recent days, such as Malu Dreyer and Reiner Haseloff in 2021 in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt , now also Daniel Günther in Schleswig-Holstein.
The first evaluation of the voter migration shows that the attraction of the CDU top candidate is offset by poor mobilization in the SPD. A large proportion of those who voted for the SPD in 2017 have not switched to another party, but simply stayed at home. The largely unknown top candidate Thomas Losse-Müller and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was under pressure to explain his politics in Ukraine, apparently gave many no reason to vote for the party. For the SPD it is the worst result in the history of the state, for the Greens it is the best.