CSU boss Markus Söder needed exactly two nights to change his strategy. His almost brutal destruction of the Jamaica dreams of Armin Laschet has not only to do with the fact that he recognized the political realities faster than the latter and openly admits the victory of the SPD.
The decisive factor is that after a few hours of sleep and probably a lot of SMS messages from his own party, Söder ushered in a clear strategy change with his maneuver, at which the timing is at best surprising. For the CSU, the only thing that counts from now on is success in the Bavarian state elections in two years’ time. Everything else is subordinated to this.
State elections have always been the most important for the CSU. Because on them depends the identity of the CSU, its unique selling point as a regional party, which is also a factor in national politics because of its dominance in a large federal state. And actually, this dominance also includes the absolute majority, which the CSU has poured into the formula “50 plus X” for decades.
Söder has to win an election first
A success in the next state election is also politically vital for Söder himself. In 2018, when he was elected as Prime Minister for the first time, he missed the absolute majority of at least the seats that his party enemy Horst Seehofer had won back five years earlier. In the local elections a year ago, too, the CSU performed comparatively poorly. And now the slump in the federal election, even if it was much milder than that of the sister party: A fourth setback, especially in a state election, would seriously damage Söder politically. It would be proof that the CSU apparently cannot win elections with him at the top.
A Jamaica alliance in Berlin with a weak Chancellor Laschet, for whose decisions the CSU would always be held jointly liable, does not fit into a “Bayern first” strategy. Because it is precisely the conservative regular voters who have turned their backs on the CSU, and the party base is always complaining that the Greens are too ingratiated themselves.
If, on the other hand, the Union were in the opposition in the federal government, the CSU in Bavaria could do its best against a traffic light coalition. Söder would have a historical role model for this. When Edmund Stoiber lost a wafer-thin to Gerhard Schröder in 2002, he then presented himself as a kind of opposing chancellor in Bavaria and was rewarded with a two-thirds majority in the state elections a year later.
Stoiber, the difficult role model
But historical models always have their pitfalls. On the one hand, the CSU was even more firmly anchored in the country under Stoiber. And on the other hand, Stoiber was able to use the Federal Council together with other Union countries as a counter-stage. Today, however, there is at least one partner in a future traffic light government in every state government.
The liberals, from whom Armin Laschet allegedly received such strong signals, have already recognized the new situation. A CDU chief whose rapid decline in authority is visible to everyone, and an incalculable CSU chief who will be more ruthless in pursuing his own interests the closer the Bavarian state elections get – what should be attractive about the FDP, not to mention the Greens ? Only Armin Laschet has not yet understood this.