A day after elections in the German state of Saarland, almost all parties had to lick their wounds on Monday. Above all for the CDU, whose prime minister Tobias Hans has been frankly humiliated – he has already announced “personal consequences”. The Conservatives, who have been in charge of the small country for the past 22 years and most recently ruled in a grand coalition with the SPD, have dropped from 40.7% (2017) to 28.5%. An omen for the upcoming elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia in May.
root cause analysis
The causes of the CDU’s defeat: As in the 2021 federal election, no competence was assigned to the party and the main candidate (Armin Laschet ran for chancellorship at the time). On the other hand, the new prime minister-designate, leader of the SPD, Anke Rehlinger, 45, who can now rule with an absolute majority, deftly exploited the changing climate.
It also benefited (the SPD rose from 30 to 43.5%) from the weakness of the “left”: after Oscar Lafontaine, co-founder and guide and political veteran in Saarland, left the group shortly before the election, it plummeted: from 12 .8 to 2.6 percent. The “left” was expelled from the state parliament.