Berlin – If you look at the polls, you rub your eyes in amazement for a moment: East Germany is being hit by a red wave, the SPD is more successful in the East than it has been in decades.
In the eastern federal states, in which the Sunday question about the federal election is regularly raised, the SPD is in the lead: in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in Brandenburg and in Berlin. In Saxony, at 18 percent, it is on par with the CDU, behind the AfD. In Thuringia, she is in head-to-head races with the AfD. When asked about the favorites for the Chancellery, Scholz beats the Green Annalena Baerbock and the CDU politician Armin Laschet in all Eastern countries, as in the rest of the republic.
How can this be explained after all the years in which the SPD threatened to sink into insignificance in some areas? After all the anger about the Hartz IV laws, which were particularly big in the east?
It is not Olaf’s frenzy that has gripped the East Germans, it is rather their typical pragmatism that guides them. Compared to the other two candidates for chancellor, Scholz seems like the least of three evils. He also addresses East Germans in a targeted manner during the election campaign, in a tone familiar to the voters of Angela Merkel, i.e. sober, factual.
Baerbock as a typical western import
Armin Laschet, a staunch Catholic, comes from the deepest west and is not only geographically very far away from the east. With his Rhineland singsong one has the impression that he could put on a carnival hat at any moment and give a hand-made speech. A few years ago, Armin Laschet wanted to send all East Germans collectively to integration courses because they did not understand democracy. They haven’t forgiven him for that. The Eastern CDU would have preferred Markus Söder from Bavaria as a candidate for chancellor. There is only one East German in Laschet’s competence team – the largely unknown Saxon State Minister Barbara Klepsch.
The Greens have a hard time in the east outside of some big cities anyway, and it doesn’t help that their top candidate is perceived as a typical import from the West. Annalena Baerbock moved from Berlin to Potsdam a few years ago, to her constituency. She likes to say “with me in Brandenburg” at public appearances. It sounds like she owns the land, but at the same time she accidentally transports the Barnim to the Oderbruch. Her tendency to make herself bigger than she is is perhaps even more unpleasant in the east than in the rest of the republic, because it ties in with existing, older clichés of the inflated Wessi.
So now Scholz and the SPD. You can tell from his campaign that he has prepared, dealt with the East and the transformation. In the trials he showed that he was familiar with the discourses in the East, praised the life’s achievements of the East Germans and pointed out the problem of the lack of elite representation.
Scholz took advice
Merkel had a complicated relationship with the East, and for a long time she avoided referring to her East German roots, also in order not to scare off voters in the West. That disappointed many in the east.
It is easier for Scholz, the expectations of West Germans are different. He has ossified himself a bit and now likes to tell journalists how, as a young lawyer from Hamburg in the 1990s, he helped East German metal workers negotiate social plans. Even many in the SPD did not know that beforehand. And it is no longer so noticeable that it was Scholz who, as SPD general secretary, helped enforce the Hartz IV laws. In the meantime, even the SPD no longer wants to know anything about Hartz IV and is demanding a minimum wage of 12 euros. Almost twice as many people in the east as in the west only receive a minimum wage.
Scholz has the advantage that there are two of the most talented East German politicians in his party: Manuela Schwesig, who is standing for election as head of government for the first time in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and the former family minister Franziska Giffey, who wants to become Berlin’s governing mayor. Both are ahead in the polls.
Before the start of the election campaign, Scholz invited one of the most important East German experts, Steffen Mau, to talk to him. Mau is a sociologist, winner of the renowned Leibniz Prize and comes from Rostock. Mau says that Scholz’s respect campaign, especially in the East, ties in with worlds of experience and feelings. One could argue that his predecessor, Martin Schulz, also spoke of respect. But at that time Angela Merkel was also running.