STORY: Only cautious applause at the NRW-SPD election party on Sunday evening in Düsseldorf. The gap to the CDU was too great after the pre-election polls predicted a head-to-head race between Christian and Social Democrats. In the first projections, the SPD came to just under 28 percent and was around 7 percent behind the CDU. SPD top candidate Thomas Kutschaty, however, claimed that he wanted to sound out a government. “Our result is below expectations, we wanted to be the strongest party. We didn’t succeed. We actually separate a few percentage points from the Union. But one thing is certain tonight: black and yellow, our number one election goal, to vote out, that it worked. Black and yellow no longer has a majority here in North Rhine-Westphalia. And then it’s a question of seeing who can form a government that will actually address the most pressing issues in the state towards the future, namely energy transition, good education, affordable housing And even if the CDU is ahead of us and the Greens have grown very, very strongly, I will say that very clearly at this point, the social democracy in North Rhine-Westphalia is ready for a state government, here in the North Rhine Parliament -Westphalia.” SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert also said that the Social Democrats in NRW would try to form a government even if they came in second. According to data from the research group Wahlen for ZDF, red-green finds the most approval in NRW, followed by black-green.