State elections on Sunday: final spurt in the election campaign in Bavaria and Hesse

State elections on Sunday
Final spurt in the election campaign in Bavaria and Hesse – top candidates appear with their counterparts

Almost 14 million people in Bavaria and Hessians are called to elect a new state parliament on Sunday. The election campaign reached its climax on Friday with numerous closing events in both countries. Shortly before the vote, the incumbents in Wiesbaden and Munich are unchallenged in the lead in surveys. According to the current ZDF “Political Barometer”, Prime Minister Markus Söder’s CSU gained one percentage point in the “Sunday Question” in a survey published on Thursday evening by the Elections Research Group compared to the previous week and ended up at 37 percent. This would roughly match the result of the 2018 state election (37.2 percent). In Hesse, Prime Minister Boris Rhein’s CDU is at 32 percent, as in the previous week.

In Bavaria, based on the polls, there is no doubt that Söder will remain Prime Minister. Five years ago, the CSU fell by more than 10 percentage points to just 37.2 percent – and was therefore once again dependent on a coalition partner. In Hesse, the CDU and SPD also suffered double-digit losses in 2018. According to surveys, the Black-Green Party in Hesse could possibly start a third term in office. In the most recent surveys, however, there is a three-way battle for second place between the Greens, SPD and AfD.

Markus Söder appears with Hendrik Wüst, Nancy Faeser with Hubertus Heil

The parties delivered the final spurt in the election campaign on Friday. Söder wanted to appear in the Löwenbräukeller in Munich with his North Rhine-Westphalian counterpart Hendrik Wüst in the evening. The Hessian head of government Rhine was expected at an event organized by the CDU district association of Central Hesse in Giessen. SPD top candidate Nancy Faeser wanted to go on stage with Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil on Friday evening in Darmstadt.

According to the ZDF “Politbarometer”, many voters are still undecided. 28 percent of respondents in Bavaria and 32 percent in Hesse do not yet know who they want to vote for. For the representative survey, 1,209 randomly selected voters in Bavaria and 1,000 in Hesse were interviewed by telephone and online from October 4th to 5th.

AfD leader Alice Weidel wants to appear in Hesse

Election surveys are generally always subject to uncertainty. Among other things, weakening party ties and increasingly short-term voting decisions make it more difficult for opinion research institutes to weight the data collected. The research group indicates a statistical margin of error of two to three percentage points. In principle, surveys only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not predictions of the election outcome.

After Alice Weidel canceled an election campaign appearance on German Unity Day, the co-party leader of the AfD wants to return to the public stage. The AfD federal office announced on Friday that she was planning to be there at the end of the Hessian election campaign at the weekend in Wiesbaden. Weidel had previously canceled a public election campaign meeting in the Bavarian-Thuringian border town of Mödlareuth – according to his own statements, “after indications of a possible imminent attack.”

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DPA