Regional election a test for Germany's federal government

Voters in Lower Saxony, Germany's second-largest state (by surface area) have started casting their ballots in state elections with much on the line for Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The Social Democrat certainly has more to lose than the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), and less to gain.

A defeat for Scholz's center-left party would be seen as a reflection on his chancellorship, whereas a defeat for the opposition CDU, enjoying some momentum in national polls, can be passed off as a regional win for the SPD's largely popular Lower Saxony State Premier Stephan Weil.

The CDU, meanwhile, could strike a major blow if their candidate, Bernd Althusmann, were to prevail: It would mean they had won three of 2022's four state elections.

"I'd definitely say the SPD has more to lose," said Uwe Jun, politics professor at Trier University. "It already lost the elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein, and secondly the federal government isn't exactly very popular right now."

Most pundits agree that a CDU victory would be a surprise, though not a major one:

Latest polls, taken a week before the election, show the center-left SPD with a lead of 3-5 percentage points over the CDU, with 31-33% and 28% respectively, with the Green Party in third place on 16%.

Opponents working together

Nevertheless, many voters outside the state could be forgiven for failing to tell the two candidates apart: They are both bespectacled white-haired white men around the same age (Weil is 63, Althusmann is 55), and what's more, they're currently governing the state together: Althusmann is Weil's finance minister in a "grand coalition" of the SPD and the CDU.

This of course makes it difficult for the CDU man to find effective attack lines against Weil's government, said Frank Decker, political scientist at the Rheinisch Friedrichs Wilhelms University in Bonn.

"That's why he's trying to campaign with national issues — and maybe he has a few points there, because the federal coalition has let too much time go by to alleviate people's concerns," he told DW. "For example, how is the new gas price brake going to be made?"

But, judging by the opinion polls, this currently isn't doing enough damage to threaten Stephan Weil, who has been governing the state for nearly a decade and has developed an image as a solid and pragmatic leader.

"His rather dry, somewhat dull manner suits Lower Saxony rather well," said Decker. "And that is always important in the states: That people can identify with someone, as when he says, 'I'm a beer-drinking lawyer'." The other point, Decker adds, is that there is broad satisfaction with Weil's performance in government.

Also in Weil's favor, according to Decker, is the fact that Lower Saxony can present itself as a kind of "pioneer" in Germany's energy transition policy. "Lower Saxony has the most wind energy plants of all the states, and the new gas import terminals will be in installed in Lower Saxony," he said. At the same time, Weil has hit popular talking points by opposing both fracking and new nuclear power stations in his state.

Coalition horse-trading

But Weil has other headaches, even if Weil wins: As things stand, he looks unlikely to amass enough parliament seats to get his preferred coalition with the Greens, while the Free Democratic Party (FDP) — the third party in Scholz's national government — may even fall out of the state parliament entirely, as it is in danger of slipping below the 5% necessary to enter parliament.

"I think the SPD hasn't ruled out a continuation of the grand coalition, and from the CDU I haven't got the impression that they definitively don't want a grand coalition either," said Uwe Jun.

This would halt a continuing trend in Germany that has seen the centrist grand coalitions being eclipsed by more complicated coalitions involving smaller parties, especially the Greens, who are now represented in nine of the country's 17 governments.

Lower Saxony is currently the only government in Germany that features a combination of the SPD and the CDU. "Of course, in the states grand coalitions usually only happen when no other coalition makes sense or is even possible," said Jun.

Could far-right AfD stop its slide?

Another keenly awaited number in this Sunday's election results will be the performance of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), who have lost ground in several state elections in recent months but who are polling at a solid 10% in Lower Saxony.

This is well ahead of the FDP and the socialist Left Party, who are projected to score as low as 3%. That would be a definite improvement on the AfD's 6% in 2017.

This is unusual because the AfD has often performed slightly more poorly in western German states and was on the cusp of being driven back to its strongholds in the East.

"Crises are always and opportunity for right-wing populists," said Decker. "And this is a mega-crisis: People are very uncertain, are very worried about rising prices, and the AfD can use that to its benefit."

Nevertheless, as Decker points out, the far-right's support in Germany remains much lower than in other European countries. "If you add the Left Party, the two fringe parties are at 14%-15% — relative to the rest of Europe that's not a worrying scale," he said.

Edited by: Sonia Phalnikar

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