Election in Schleswig-Holstein: Why Kiel is important for Merz and Habeck

There will not be much to gain for the SPD in Schleswig-Holstein, while the federal CDU urgently needs the CDU prime minister to win as brilliantly as possible. In Berlin, people are looking forward to Kiel – and with concern.

After the 2017 state elections, it was perhaps more than just a tip against the unknown election winner of the CDU: the Green politicians Robert Habeck and FDP man Wolfgang Kubicki had decided at the time who under they can be prime minister, it was said at the time.

But Prime Minister Daniel Günther has remained anything but pale. Günther has achieved great political stability and a remarkably high level of popularity. His unexcited way of governing quite quietly with Germany’s only Jamaica alliance is apparently well received: 76 percent of Schleswig-Holstein’s electorate are satisfied with Günther, and according to the Infratest dimap survey he would get 61 percent in a direct election. Values ​​that were otherwise only known from Angela Merkel.

The new chairman of the federal CDU, Friedrich Merz, urgently needs such a success – after the CDU crisis year 2021 and an election defeat in Saarland in spring 2022, which already fell during his term of office. Not only for his own weight at the top of the party, “but also as tailwind for the even more important elections in North Rhine-Westphalia that are due the following week,” says political scientist Uwe Jun in an interview with tagesschau.de.

There, an election victory for the CDU Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst, who has just come into office, is far from certain. If North Rhine-Westphalia were to fall back to the SPD, it would be a severe blow – especially for the new Merz CDU.

Günther in pole position

In comparison, Günther is in pole position: The CDU poll values ​​are currently 38 percent so high that now even the Greens or the FDP have to fear that they will no longer have a say in government, because it could be enough for a two-party alliance with one of the two .

That would presumably be a major industrial accident, especially for the green model Minister Habeck, who comes from Schleswig-Holstein, and his party: Schleswig-Holstein, where he ruled for many years as Minister in the Günther cabinet, is something like the inner-German avant-garde for the expansion of renewable energy Energies: It is the only federal state that already fulfills the quota for wind energy aimed for by the federal government – and even supplies other federal states with surpluses.

The pressure on the Greens not only to achieve a good result in this state election is therefore extremely high. However, their chances are doubly good, explains the Berlin publicist Albrecht von Lucke from the “Blätter für deutsche und Internationale Politik”: On the one hand, they benefit from a weak state SPD with a not too popular top candidate, who was also in the Greens until 2020.

On the other hand, the federal trend should also help them, which rates the Green cabinet members Annalena Baerbock and Habeck much more positively than the work of SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Chancellor’s party has completely different problems

For the Chancellor and his SPD, on the other hand, a loss in Schleswig-Holstein will already be priced in – Scholz currently has other problems on the federal and global political stage, which are causing him significantly more trouble. A weak SPD in Kiel should hardly have an additional impact. Conversely, however, it would be a great support for the Chancellor’s Party, which is currently suffering from a bad image and in the polls, to win back the old SPD home state of North Rhine-Westphalia the Sunday after next.

The FDP, which co-governs both in the state and in the federal government, is likely to tremble more in Kiel: not all of their voters had wanted a traffic light government with SPD and Greens in the federal government, which is also reflected in the polls in the federal government. The party could now get this resentment at the state level. Because traditionally, “federal policy has a stronger impact on smaller parties in state elections than on larger parties, which live more on their top candidates,” says political scientist Jun.

Traffic light frustration?

It doesn’t currently look as if the Liberals would have to worry about entering the state parliament. But at the same time they know that the CDU prime minister with his very liberal course also scores with the FDP electorate.

In addition: Should Günther’s result be so good that he could govern in a two-party alliance – and have the choice between the FDP and the Greens, the FDP could lose out. According to information from tagesschau.de it can be assumed that he would then rather govern with the Greens.

Günther never made a secret of his openness to the Greens, he got on very well with Habeck in the cabinet. He is also said to have a good relationship with the incumbent Green Finance Minister and top candidate Monika Heinold – not unimportant for the success of a government.