For a possible Jamaica coalition, there is at least a single boo, but the traffic lights get no reaction at all from the Greens gathered in Munich’s Muffathalle. When the polling stations close, the mood is restrained at best, and when the first forecasts appear on the big screen at 6 p.m. sharp, the Greens are cheering as expected, but the sunflowers and the paper windmills on the beer tables hardly shake.
The situation seems too unclear, and the growth for one’s own party is also limited. A smooth 14 percent in Bavaria, 4.2 percentage points more than in the 2017 federal election, that falls well short of our own expectations. In addition, this first forecast shows that the Greens will only be the third strongest party in Bavaria.
Even the state chairwoman Eva Lettenbauer, who took the floor around 6.30 p.m. as the first top Bavarian Green, admits that the Greens had hoped and expected much more. And yet there was “significant gains” and “the best result in our 40-year history”. “The clear mandate to get involved in the next government,” Lettenbauer derives from the forecast. Parliamentary parliamentary group leader Ludwig Hartmann was “disappointed because we did not achieve what we set out to do. We have hoped for significantly more so that a real climate protection policy will finally be implemented in our country” after the first forecast.
Nationwide, many months ago, the Greens were even allowed to hope to become the strongest party. In Bavaria, however, the Greens were never even allowed to secretly dream about it. But after all, second place behind the CSU seemed to be safe for the Bavarian Greens for a long time. Just like in the state elections three years ago, when the Greens took 17.6 percent and the SDP clearly distanced themselves with their 9.7 percent. Top candidate Claudia Roth had already seen herself in a “black-green battle” in the Free State.
But then the proverbial trend, which was supposedly a comrade in the past, re-entered the SPD. Although the survey on behalf of the television station Sat1 saw the Greens with 18 percent in September still three percentage points ahead of the SPD. In July, however, this gap in the polls was significantly larger. In the BR’s Bavarian trend, however, the Greens fell behind the Social Democrats from July to September. The polling researchers from Infratest-Dimap had granted them 16 percent – two points behind the SPD with 18 percent.
However, all of these polls were far above the 2017 election results of the Bavarian Greens. At that time, she had already celebrated a double-digit election result in Bavaria, only to slip 9.8 percent across Bavaria over the course of the election evening. In 2017, however, that was also considered a great success, which the Greens themselves were surprised by. This year the bar of expectations was already significantly higher.
All this can hardly have been due to the top candidates, because the Greens, just like four years earlier, voted with Claudia Roth and Anton Hofreiter. Both are still considered to be left-wing parties and, outside of the Greens, still to some as a public shock. But unlike in 2017, the issue of immigration hardly played a role in this election campaign. Instead, the Greens could hope, as ancestral eco-party, to benefit from the climate crisis, which is generally felt to be more and more urgent.
Top candidate Roth – after all, Vice President of the Bundestag in the past legislative period – toured the country in an electric minibus, visited brunch and information stands, spoke here and there, took part in vigils and steamboat trips. Because the Greens also plowed the rural areas in which they had previously hardly received any votes. The Greens had been able to increase the number of their members in the Free State to almost 20,000 by this year.
With their result on Sunday, they will now be able to send more MPs to Berlin than the previous eleven. Unlucky four years ago was the Miesbacher Karl Bär, for him list position twelve should be enough this time.