Did Florian Streibl really just say that? Sense of proportion? He thinks “that we in Bavaria are currently on the right track with a sense of proportion,” says the parliamentary group leader of the Free Voters about the policy in the pandemic. Is someone copying the prime minister’s choice of words? Recently, Markus Söder has been preaching that his CSU no longer only plays in the “team caution”, but also in the “team sense of proportion”. Less hardship, more freedom, that is Söder’s new Corona message. This shows that “the CSU is swiveling in line with the Free Voters,” says FW parliamentary group leader Streibl.
Research tones with which the FW MPs start their winter retreat this Wednesday in the Maximilianeum – and with it the new political year. The first messages of the year were not at all useful as a booster for self-confidence. Last week Sat 1 published a poll according to which the free voters would come to eight percent, would now be the state election. That would be a good three and a half percentage points less than in the 2018 election. Nevertheless, Fabian Mehring, Parliamentary Managing Director of the FW parliamentary group, says: “The overall situation is relatively comfortable for us at the moment.”
Are the FW losing their unique selling proposition?
Such slogans have to do with the majority ratios that would result from the survey. Because the CSU only got 35 percent and the traffic light parties Greens (15), SPD (14) and FDP (9) together received 38 percent, “no government could be formed without us,” says Mehring. “That is why we are confident and in good spirits.” The question is, however, whether the free voters are lulled into a false sense of security. Because if the Omikron variant of the coronavirus really allows the CSU to take a more liberal course in the pandemic: Will the Free Voters then lose their unique selling point within the black-orange coalition? The fact that they stood for a less resolute course in the coalition for a long time earned the free voters sympathy among CSU supporters, for whom their own party was too strict – and 7.5 percent in the federal election in Bavaria, more than twice as many votes like 2017.
With a softer Corona policy, the CSU could make the free voters dispute their increase in votes again. But FW managing director Mehring is convinced that a soft Söder of his party will not cost any votes on balance. “People don’t want a party to be so strong that it dominates everything,” says Mehring. But what he finds, not only with a view to Corona: “The CSU wants to serve its original clientele again.”
In fact, there is increasing evidence that party leader Söder is currently rebalancing the CSU’s substantive accents after the failed federal election (31.7 percent). “Of course we want to take care of our regular voters again. Agriculture, medium-sized businesses, rural areas,” said Söder a few days ago. He thus marked out exactly the target groups that the Free Voters claim for themselves – and from which they have been able to steal numerous votes from the CSU in recent years, while Söder vied for the voters of the Greens with a more urban course, largely unsuccessfully.
The FDP was formally crushed by the CSU
So there are many indications that the CSU is competing even more with its coalition partner. By the state election in 2023, the free voters will have to find a way to deal with it. It shouldn’t be easy, at least not if the CSU continues the new competition as subtly as it has just started. “We work well together in the coalition,” said Prime Minister Söder again recently. He had violently attacked the free voters in the federal election campaign. Anyone who observes how tenderly Söder suddenly speaks again about his coalition partner feels reminiscent of the love scenes that took place in the 2013 election year in the alliance of the CSU and FDP. “Horst Seehofer was smart enough to only talk well about the FDP,” said the former FDP economics minister Martin Zeil about the then CSU prime minister, who formally crushed the liberals with expressions of harmony – and thus stole the air from them as to profile independent party. The result of this maneuver is well known: the CSU brought back the absolute majority, the FDP was thrown out of the state parliament.
Despite the risk of losing profile and thus votes due to too great a coalition harmony, the Free Voters blow back Söder’s air kisses. The CSU is “clearly our natural partner and the first address” for future coalitions, says FW managing director Mehring. And parliamentary group leader Streibl emphasizes that both parties have “moved closer together” after the federal election. The coalition is a “model of success”, one will “in the future be more of a fighting community than we would war with one another”.
At their parliamentary group retreat, from Wednesday to Friday, the Free Voters will deal with the subject of schools, among other things. Sports classes in particular suffered in the pandemic, says Streibl. Now it is a matter of “bringing the health of the students back to more consciousness”. For this purpose, the Free Voters invited several interlocutors, including Dominik Klein, a former national handball player. Another focus of the exam will be care. “We need a lot more people in the system,” says Streibl, “well trained, better paid and socially valued.”
School, care, both social issues, with which the CSU would like to peddle more again. Really no danger for free voters when it comes to catching votes? “The pool is big enough” for both parties, says parliamentary group leader Streibl, “if we want to work for the good of the country, we have to work together.” Sooner or later, however, the peace is likely to come to an end. In the election campaign, says Streibl, there will be “more trouble with each other”.