Bavarians deliver stunning rebuke to conservative Merkel allies
CSU vote collapses to 36.2% while Greens surge to 18.1%, according to projections
Voters in Germany’s powerful southern state of Bavaria on Sunday delivered a stunning rebuke to the ruling Christian Social Union, in an election that underscored the evaporation of support for the parties in Angela Merkel’s grand coalition in Berlin.
The CSU, which has ruled Bavaria continuously since 1957, saw its share of the vote collapse from 47.7 per cent in the last election five years ago to 36.2 per cent, according to projections from ZDF television, as voters defected in their droves to the Greens and the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Speaking to supporters in the Bavarian parliament, Markus Söder, the state’s CSU prime minister, said it was a “painful result”, though the party had been given a “clear mandate” by voters “to form a stable government”. Robert Habeck, the Green leader, said the people of Bavaria had “voted for change”.
The campaign was dominated by the divisive issue of immigration, in a sign of how the shockwaves from Ms Merkel’s fateful decision to let in more than a million refugees in 2015-16 are continuing to reverberate through German politics and to reshape the party landscape.
Alarmed by the rise of the anti-Islam AfD, the CSU tried to outflank them by talking tough on immigration and picking fights with Ms Merkel over asylum policy. But the strategy appeared to have backfired spectacularly by alienating tens of thousands of moderate CSU voters and driving them into the arms of the Greens.
The result confirmed the Greens’ status as the rising force in German politics. Running on a platform of open borders, liberal social values and the fight against climate change the party’s support surged to 18.1 per cent, from 8.4 per cent in 2013. Meanwhile the AfD won 10.9 per cent.
“This is an earthquake for Bavaria,” said Jürgen Falter, a political scientist at the University of Mainz. The CSU had governed the state with an absolute majority for most of the past 60 years. “It was Bavaria and Bavaria was the CSU. That is now no longer the case.”
It was a dismal night not only for the CSU but also for the left-of-centre Social Democrats (SPD), whose share of the vote collapsed to 9.6 per cent, from 20.6 per cent five years ago. SPD leader Andrea Nahles described the result as a “bitter defeat”.
The disastrous performance of both the CSU and SPD highlights the shaky ground the grand coalition in Berlin now rests on. All three parties in the alliance, Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the CSU and the SPD, are haemorrhaging support. “[They are all] in decline now,” said Jörg Meuthen, a senior AfD politician.
Some are now questioning whether the coalition, already frayed by personal rivalries and near constant bickering over policy, can survive a full term in office.
“This outcome throws ever more doubt on the future of the grand coalition,” said Heinrich Oberreuter, head of the Passau Journalism Institute and an expert on the CSU. “Based on current polls, if an election were held now, the CDU, CSU and SPD would not even command a majority in the Bundestag.”
Ms Nahles blamed the SPD’s drubbing on the row which blew up during the summer between the CDU and CSU over asylum policy and which brought the coalition government to the brink of collapse. “We could not free ourselves from this factional dispute, and as a result there was no momentum from Berlin” to help the Bavarian SPD, she said.
The result could lead to a shake-up of Ms Merkel’s cabinet. Horst Seehofer, the CSU party chairman and interior minister, could come under pressure to resign both posts, triggering a government reshuffle.
Mr Seehofer was the chief protagonist in the CDU/CSU bust-up over the summer, which many in the CSU blame for the slump in the party’s fortunes. But he has no clear successor as party chairman, and his resignation could set off an intense power struggle between pretenders to the CSU throne.
Markus Söder, who played a key role in the summer revolt against Ms Merkel and the CDU, could also face calls for his resignation, though most experts think he will survive since he has the solid backing of the CSU group in the Bavarian parliament.
The CSU will be forced to form a coalition government — a humiliating outcome for a party that has run Bavaria single-handedly for 49 of the past 54 years.
Its preference will be for a coalition with the Free Voters, a small party that is mainly focused on local politics. ZDF projections showed that such an alliance would command a narrow majority of seats.
The CSU could also team up with the Greens, though it would be highly reluctant to do so: the two parties are deeply divided over immigration, transport and environmental policy.