Finally good news for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who took office in December. After a very complicated start to his mandate, between pandemic and war in Ukraine, his social democratic party (SPD) recorded a triumph on Sunday March 27 in the regional elections in Saarland, a small border region with France and Luxembourg.
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With 43.5% of the vote and an increase of 13.9 points compared to 2017, the SPD obtains an absolute majority in the regional parliament and should govern alone. A feat in a region ruled for 23 years by the Christian Democrats (CDU), who governed there for 10 years with the SPD, as a minority partner.
reconquest
The future minister-president of Sarre will therefore be Anke Rehlinger. Very popular, this 45-year-old lawyer has gained credibility during the last eight years when, under the leadership of the CDU, she was Deputy Minister Regional President and Minister for Labour, Economy, Transport and energy. Acclaimed by her troops on Sunday evening, it is up to her to reclaim this industrial region of Germany, economically struggling and where the theme of maintaining employment is central.
As confirmed by a survey by the ARD channel of SPD voters in Saarland, the personality of Anke Rehlinger played a decisive role in their vote, far ahead of the party’s programme. The regional effect is therefore evident. In the event of a new legislative election, the SPD would only be credited with 25% of the votes in this region, far from the 43% won by Anke Rehlinger.
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No matter. At the federal headquarters of the SPD, this first electoral test since the legislative elections in September has put some balm in the hearts of the leaders. “The SPD’s comeback goes beyond the legislative elections”launched, very happy, the new co-president of the party, Lars Klinbeil.
Cold shower for the CDU
For the Christian Democrats, on the other hand, the shower is freezing. They fell by 12.2 points, only obtained 28.5% and lost the bastion of the former party leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. “The campaign was very difficult”analyzed, with tears in his eyes, the outgoing Minister President Tobias Hans. “With the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, we were unable to impose our ideas for the future”he believes.
The slap is also severe for the new federal leadership, elected in January, which tried on Sunday to limit the damage by raising the regional elements of this defeat, between errors of the local CDU and ultrapopularity of Anke Rehlinger. Feeling the defeat coming, the new boss, Friedrich Merz, had also avoided campaigning on the ground.
On Sunday, management was trying to keep morale high by talking about the next more promising regional elections. In May, the regions of Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, led by the Christian Democrats, will renew their parliaments. The CDU is in the lead there in terms of voting intentions.
As for the other political formations, only the far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), manages to cross the 5% mark, while recording a slight drop in its support with 5.7% of the vote. The disappointment is enormous for the liberals of the FDP and the ecologists who narrowly fail to make their return to the regional parliament. As for the radical left (die Linke), it simply disappears from the local political landscape.