Schnitzel Republic: Schleswig-Holstein Election Results

Monday, May 8, 2017

Schleswig-Holstein Election Results

The Landtag election in Schleswig-Holstein (SH) wrapped up last night. It's a state to the far north of Germany.....on the western side of the country.

Two months ago, with the SPD candidate change-out....Schulz arriving on the scene nationally....the numbers looked great for the SPD to win this state election.

Well....things changed and the Schulz-enthusiasm dissolved.

The Merkel CDU-Party ended up with 32-percent of the vote. The SPD Party with 27-percent. The Greens got almost 13-percent, the FDP with 11.5-percent, and the AfD Party with almost 6-percent. The Linke Party doesn't have much appeal in the region, and were lucky to get 3.8-percent.

The key shocker wasn't just that the CDU won, but that they suggested that they would try to partner up with the Greens and FDP. I watched the short interview on this, and the FDP kinda hinted that they didn't think such a relationship was favorable....aggravating the Green Party chief a bit while live on camera.

Why this coalition building with the Greens? The national level of the CDU folks would like to win the fall election (September), and have a new coalition form....with the Green Party and FDP. Twenty years ago, to suggest that the CDU might one day partner up with the Greens would have gotten you laughed out of the room. Things in the past decade have changed in a drastic sense.....with the CDU adapting to the Merkel theme and having a number of policies which attract Green Party interest. On the other side of the scale.....the bulk of the Greens have become less radicalized and see that cooperation helps on some of their agenda items. I would take a humble guess that a quarter of the Greens are not happy with a CDU relationship, and see their party weakened by this type of cooperation.

The next state election? North Rhineland Westphalia, in a week. The CDU victory helps there, and I suspect that the CDU might be able to carve out a one to two point victory over the SPD. If that occurs, it's really a big mess for the SPD in the fall election and zero chance to win.

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