Over the ensuing weeks Armin Laschet has shown himself to be incompetent, charmless and a political dinosaur. Even conservative voters have become more and more disinclined to vote for him, never mind anyone else. The candidate of the Green party, Annalena Baerbock, was quickly sidelined by the press. (I’m not sure whether the greatest fear was that we might have ANOTHER woman at the helm for years to come or her supposedly radical policies.) The greatest surprise was that Laschet’s unassuming competitor Olaf Scholz (SPD) now appears to be the only viable choice. In comparison with Laschet, Scholz seems level-headed and trustworthy (1).
During the last few weeks, the polls have shown a consistent trend: the formerly moribund SPD and FDP are steadily gaining while the CDU/CSU is losing voters by the droves. The now very real possibility of the SPD winning the election has put the CSU in a particularly difficult position. To enter the national parliament a party needs at least 5% of the national vote. As an exclusively Bavarian party, the CSU needs to gain enough votes locally (a minimum of 32%) to have an overall share of 5%. So far this has never been a problem. However, if the party’s losses are as great as the polls predict, the CSU might well lose a considerable number of seats in the national parliament (only local CSU candidates who are voted in directly would get a seat.). Thus, the CSU is now in panic mode. Recently, brand new election posters have appeared everywhere with the unlikely sight of Markus Söder smiling benignly at everyone. The new campaign, however, is just a rehash of an age-old one: Bavarians are warned starchly of “a shift to the left” and told that only the CSU will keep Germany “stable and strong”. It remains to be seen if this will put the fear of God into Bavarian voters and make them vote for the non-Bavarian Laschet. Moreover, the CSU itself is not looking all that shiny after a series of corruption scandals during the pandemic.
In short, the outcome of this election is still far from certain. Like other Western democracies, German society has become more fragmented, a development that has been reinforced and accelerated by the pandemic. According to current polls, neither of the two big parties will secure more than 25% of the vote and at least six parties are likely to be voted into the national parliament. The six parties cover a wide political spectrum from arch conservative to an invigorated left (AfD, FDP, CDU/CSU, SPD, Grüne, die Linke). Younger voters generally favour the smaller parties over the old established ones who usually care little for their needs. Of the 60.4 million Germans who can vote on Sunday, 2.8 million will vote for the first time. Although many younger Germans would like to see fundamental change, the oldest voters might still decide the outcome of this election. Only 14.4% of the voters are less than 30 years old, whereas 21.3% of all voters are over 70.
(1) I use the word “seem” advisedly here. The popular youtuber Rezo has just published a video in which he goes over the big political scandals Scholz was/is involved in. Rezo is known for his careful and in-depth research and has previously made waves with a series of videos detailing scandals and wrongdoings by the big parties, in particular the CDU/CSU. The (healthy) scepticism of younger voters towards the established parties is partly due to Rezo’s poignant criticism.