German election: A victory for the Social Democrats

We predicted a close election, but not at this point. It defeated Social Democrat Olaf Scholes (SPD) in Germany on Sunday evening over his rival Christian Democrat Armin Lachet (CDU-CSU). Two candidates denying Angela Merkel’s heirs came in pocket handkerchiefs. Thus, on Sunday evening, for the first time in the country’s recent history, the two leading candidates demanded the right to form a government coalition.

Since the beginning of the evening, Olaf Scholes has given a very small lead to one expulsion poll SPD and said another has won on par with CDU-CSU. With some points behind, Armin Lashet demanded the right to start negotiations. This will not be the first time the German president has been elected by a coalition, uniting a majority of elected officials, whichever party comes first. In 1969, Social Democrat Willie Brand came to power, while his party fell behind the Christian Democrats.

At SPD headquarters, if one wears a smile of victory, frustration is felt among supporters of Armin Lachet. His party did worse than expected from opinion polls, which saw them at gaining about 8 points after the 2017 election. On the contrary, to everyone’s surprise, Angela Merkel’s finance minister, Olaf Scholes, is said to have won by more than 5 points per party. For at least 15 years.

“The Germans voted for change […] They want more respect in this country, an industrial strategy and better protection of the environment, ”said Olaf Scholes. Whatever the outcome of the talks, which begin this week, this election appears to be a personal victory for Hamburg’s former mayor, not loved by his own party, because he was defeated as president, more so than the left.

Merkel’s shadow

Throughout the campaign, viewers would have noted that the man who unpacked the wallet during the Govt-19 epidemic was Angela Merkel’s real train. A successful strategy, according to opinion polls, would have displaced 1.4 million votes from the CDU-CSU to the SPD. “We are a pragmatic party. We have to govern how we govern and have everything we need for it,” Olaf Scholes added.

On Sunday, although his party was far from acknowledging defeat, the election appeared to be rather a bitter defeat for Armin Lachet. This candidate of the old guard of the CDU, described Glass As the “incarnation of boredom in politics,” the most famous leader of the CSU snatched Marcus Soder’s candidacy, clearly to the right of him. Before Lachet deposited his mistakes in the ballot box until the last minute, with a bad gesture, he was allowed to see who he had unfortunately voted for, which was illegal in Germany.

The Germans voted for change […] They want more respect, an industrial strategy and better environmental protection in this country

Disappointment was noticed among the Greens, whose candidate Annalena Barbach took the lead in all the polls at the start of the campaign. It counts her inflated CV and the plagiarism charges against her. The party recorded the best results in its history (15%), “although the party’s co-chairman Robert Habek agreed.

Liberals in the FPD were pleased to finally see a double-digit result (11%). On Sunday evening, its chairman, Christian Lindner, presented himself as a kingmaker. In 2017, Lindner refused to participate in the government of Angela Merkel. On Sunday, he did not appear to have ruled out any circumstances and said he would like to talk to the Greens first. Both of these parties represent one electorate from the privileged neighborhoods of the big cities so that one of the two major parties can impose their terms.

With 11% of the vote, the far-right AfD party, which entered parliament in 2017 after the immigration crisis, lost some points, but it is embedded in the political landscape. By contrast, with 5% of the vote, Die Linke’s far left is actually collapsing. On Sunday, it was uncertain whether the party would be represented in parliament. On the right, the fear that he would participate in an alliance with the SPD immediately evaporated.

Three way alliance

With such a split vote, the formation of a coalition government will be more complicated than ever. In 2017, it took almost six months to achieve this. After several attempts, Angela Merkel had to form an alliance with the SPD to form the so-called “Great Alliance” in Germany. This year, Olaf Scholes said the SPU would reject any alliance with the CDU-CSU. On Sunday evening, Armin Lachet announced that this was “not something to do.”

So only a three-party alliance is possible. Nothing in the German constitution prevents a party in the second place from trying its luck. So the SPD and the CDU-CSU did not exclude themselves from negotiations. Although Sunday’s candidates promised to act quickly, most observers believe that Germany will not have a government before Christmas.

Queues outside polling stations are not uncommon, as postal voting peaked on the famous summer day in Berlin. Ballots have even run out at some polling stations, such as the one at the Ustinov School in Charlottenburg. In some neighborhoods, we took them by bike. It must be said that the referendum and the district assembly election take place simultaneously in Berlin.

There were 709 delegates in the last bandwagon. No one knows how many will be there next Sunday since the list of elected representatives from 598 constituencies was added to the different number of elected representatives by the system to equalize the proportional votes each party received.

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