Schulz and S-H State Election

Schlesweg-Holstein's state election is in seven days.  If you go back to late December....the polls showed the CDU safely at 34-percent in the lead....making Merkel fairly happy.  The SPD was sitting at 26-percent.  Oddly 90 days later, with Schulz as the new leader of the SPD....the Schlesweg-Holstein poll was done again...reversing....SPD leading with 33-percent, and the CDU at 27-percent.

Saarland kinda changed the landscape on polls and election results.

Schulz and the state SPD team could lose this election by 2 or 3 points, and it'd be acceptable.  If there is a 10-point spread, with the CDU winning, there's some heavy problems at work here (mostly for Schulz).

What people are quietly pointing out is that that while they might like Schulz in some ways, this idea of a SPD-Green-Linke Party coalition for the government is not making a fair segment of the SPD voters happy.

Normally....NO ONE goes out with some coalition talk until the night of election.  This is one odd thing that you notice about German politics.  There might be some gossip leading up to the weeks prior to the election, but you don't come out almost a year ahead of the election with some agreed upon coalition plan.

About five months ago, the SPD, Greens and Linke Party held a private weekend meeting, and came out with their charter.....they had all the topics laid out and reached their agreement on how the coalition would work.  At the time, news journalists were all peppy and positive.  I just sat there and thought.....across the nation....probably a third of all traditional SPD voters would absolutely not want to be part of a Linke Party situation.

How did this idea of a coalition deal come to be?  Unknown.

There is this one odd aspect of the SPD election.....they went out two years ago and hired a political analyst/strategist from the Obama 2012 election team.  At the time, I thought this was strange....there are plenty of German strategists around for these elections.  The only thing I could see is that he's there to shake up the election and find new ways to draw people over to the party.

Maybe this guy talked the SPD into this early coalition chit-chat....thinking that big-team idea would make people happy.

So Schulz is sitting in a difficult position.  If Schulz has some ten-point loss, there's likely to be a meeting where they cancel out the coalition idea and hint that they would invite the CDU as a partner.  No one will take this serious.....in my humble opinion, but at least they tried.