Bavaria’s FDP leader Martin Hagen can hardly be reached on Monday, the federal executive board, the party executive committee, the committees. It may well have been a crisis meeting after the election defeat the day before in Berlin. “We know how serious the situation is,” says Hagen about the analysis and discussion. Especially in his state association: the huge losses in elections like in Schleswig-Holstein in 2022, the missed entry into parliament in Lower Saxony and now also in Berlin – the Bavarian FDP can watch their party friends everywhere since the traffic light participation in the federal government. In October there is a state election in Bavaria, does the same fate threaten? A “bitter evening for the liberals” had Hagen tweeted on Sunday after the projections. And promptly earned malice from users: “You will be next in the fall.”
The FDP was four percent in the latest BR24 Bavarian trend, before that there were only three, in another survey in January at least five – in 2018 it just got back into the state parliament with 5.1 percent. It’s going to be a trembling election year. Hagen’s analysis, however, is more optimistic. It’s no secret that the traffic lights aren’t giving tailwind and that the FDP electorate “feels culturally uncomfortable” in the constellation, he says, that was “priced in”.
The Berlin election is again a special case: Because of the “catastrophic balance sheet” of the Senate, there was a change of mood – with the CDU as a beneficiary, the FDP went under. In Bavaria, where no race for the post of prime minister is expected, things will be different. Hagen wants to do a “turn around” for the federal party in the Free State. “Pure FDP” is the recipe – appear with the core positions and show what you are already doing.
The faction in the state parliament is at least noticeable because of its eagerness to work, especially since there are only twelve members of parliament. For example, the new committee of inquiry into the controversial financing of the Nuremberg Future Museum is ultimately due to the persistence of the FDP. And in the Bavarian trend, the question of competencies showed that when it came to economics and financial policy, respondents gave the FDP even better marks than the Greens, the leader of the opposition, and the governing Free Voters. Of course, this could not be converted into approval for the Sunday question.
What is already certain: the FDP wants to remove the A-word, traffic light, from the vocabulary during the election campaign, definitely does not position itself in a camp with the SPD and the Greens, sees the CSU as a potential partner. The impression often arises that the FDP openly offers itself as a replacement for the FW. The office of economics minister, according to a Hagen classic, meaning Hubert Aiwanger, is “felt to be vacant”. Hagen put it this way on Monday: There is certainly “no cuddle course” to the CSU. But you want to show that you are a modern coalition partner, as a “corrective and driving force”.
In 2013, the FDP was kicked out of the state parliament, out of government with the CSU. Opinions on the current situation differ among the elders. “The FDP is once again fighting for its existence,” said former Economics Minister Martin Zeil, 66 Augsburg General. “Obviously the traffic light is doing us more harm than good.”
Wolfgang Heubisch, 76, then Minister of Science and now Vice-President of the state parliament, is relaxed when asked by the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It’s just that “we’re brutally dependent on the national trend,” and the traffic light wasn’t ideal either. And yet it was far worse in 2013 – polls in which the FDP failed nationwide at the five percent hurdle, constant trouble in the federal government and party. Heubisch believes that votes from the FW and in the cities from the CSU can already be obtained in the autumn, above all with economic competence. And blues feelings are not helpful there, despite the election slippers. “I’ve been through so much in the FDP that it certainly doesn’t throw you off track.”