At 5 p.m. the survey figures were there, at 5:05 p.m. Florian Streibl responded with an email to the press. His joy had to come out, and fast. A “wonderful confirmation” and an “enormous incentive” for the Bavarian elections in 2023, the parliamentary group leader of the Free Voters commented on Thursday on the new Bavarian trend, which Streibl’s party sees at eleven percent, would already be state elections. Plus three percentage points, almost a third more votes than in the survey at the beginning of the year, no other party was able to increase to this extent.
“We free voters can handle a crisis!” Streibl rejoices in view of the problems that have plagued his parliamentary group for the past three years. First Corona, now the energy crisis. What is definitely true, as of October 2022: The FW can hold its own in a coalition with the apparently overpowering CSU. This impression is solidifying after four years in the state government.
At the start of the coalition, at the end of 2018, FW boss Hubert Aiwanger himself warned that his party could be crushed by the CSU. You have to be careful “if you go to bed with someone who is four times your weight,” he said. It is obvious that Aiwanger had the fate of the FDP in mind, which co-governed from 2008 to 2013 as a junior partner of the CSU. The end of the black-yellow coalition story is well known: the CSU regained the absolute majority in 2013, the Liberals were thrown out of the state parliament. It is understandable that the Free Voters took the fate of the FDP as a warning example because there is no other example. By 2008, the CSU had governed alone for 46 years.
So is it time to revise the empirically rather thinly supported thesis that you can only perish as a coalition partner of the CSU? In any case, most recently the CSU used the same instruments in dealing with the Free Voters with which they successfully pushed the FDP below the five percent mark: pledges of allegiance and declarations of love. He wanted to “continue the coalition with the Free Voters,” said Markus Söder.
In the meantime, the CSU boss even buddies with the FW boss when it comes to vaccinations. Söder said on Tuesday at the press conference after the cabinet meeting that he had recommended his ministers to be vaccinated against the flu. Then he smiled at Aiwanger, his economics minister, whose skepticism about vaccination used to drive him crazy. He didn’t want to start the topic again, it’s all voluntary,” said the Prime Minister. And Aiwanger? Acknowledged Söder’s friendliness with a demonstratively innocent look into the air. Then laughing together, pats on the back, like two buddies.
The soundtrack for the state assembly is set
A prime minister has already been so cuddly to his government partner. “Horst Seehofer was smart enough to only talk well about the FDP and that he wanted to continue the coalition,” said then-FDP Economics Minister Martin Zeil about the 2013 election year, when Seehofer smothered the liberals with compliments and literally smothered them took to make a name for himself alongside the CSU.
The free voters, on the other hand, seem to be able to do this – although they are currently showing significantly less than during long stretches of the pandemic, in which they repeatedly complained about the strict course of the CSU. Currently? CSU and FW grumble harmoniously, about the traffic light coalition in Berlin. An energy price cap is needed “not only for gas, but also for oil and electricity,” demanded FW boss Aiwanger on Friday and spoke about “the chaotic conditions” in the federal government. This should also set the soundtrack for the state assembly of the FW this Saturday in Straubing.
The CSU, on the other hand, cannot like the survey high of the coalition partner. After all, party leader Söder has proclaimed the goal of winning back votes in the country, where the FW are particularly strong. In addition, there is his own poll value, 37 percent, which is below the CSU values of the summer polls. On Twitter, Söder still celebrates the “big majority” of the coalition in the Bayern trend. Söder does not mention that the CSU has to thank the FW more than ever for this majority.