The failure of the German tripartite in the European Championships complicates the last stretch of Scholz’s mandate

The hangover from election night in Germany is especially painful this Monday at the Willy Brandt Haus, the headquarters of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. This Sunday the SPD obtained the worst result in its history with a meager 13.9% of the votes, which, added to the disaster of its green and liberal partners in the Executive, is putting the stability of the Government coalition to the test. There is talk of a debacle, of a catastrophe, and there are even those who allude to a possible electoral advance that others categorically exclude because none of the members of the tripartite would derive any benefit from it. If not brought forward, the federal elections should be held in the fall of next year. And the result of Sunday’s elections – added to those in September in three states in the east of the country – predict for Scholz an agonizing end to his mandate.

With the count completed, the results coincide almost to a tenth with the exit polls published at six in the afternoon this Sunday. The conservatives of the Union (the sum of the Christian Democrats of the CDU and their Bavarian partner of the CSU) are the clear winners, with 30% of the votes. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is in second place with 15.9%, followed by the SPD (13.9%) and the Greens (11.9%). The collapse of the Greens, in line with what environmentalists have suffered in the rest of the EU, is dramatic: they have lost 8.6 percentage points. Scholz’s third partner, the FDP liberals, are the ones who emerge the most successful in the elections (5.2%) because in 2019 they were already at a minimum.

The traffic light coalition ―so called after the colors of the three parties: red, green and yellow― was limping along almost from the very beginning of its journey, in December 2021, with approval ratings at rock bottom, but the disaster of the Europeans subjects increasing pressure on Scholz. The electoral posters have shown two faces on a red background: that of the SPD’s main candidate, Katarina Barley, and that of Scholz, unfailingly linking the vote for the European Parliament to the figure of the chancellor. The European elections have thus become a plebiscite on their policies. An error begins to be heard in the SPD. According to a survey by public television ARD – which was seen on the screens of the Willy Brandt Haus while the polls were coming out – only 23% of Germans are satisfied with Scholz’s management.

Tense budget negotiations

The upcoming budget negotiations are on track to be even more tense than the previous ones, with disputes between government partners making headlines daily. Almost two and a half million of the votes that German social democracy has lost have slipped down the drain of abstentionism. Almost one and a half have gone to add to the count of the Christian Democrats, almost 600,000 have gone to the extreme right and the same number to a new left-wing populist party, according to the analysis of public television ARD.

Also in Los Verdes, the biggest loser of the night, there are long faces this Monday. They obtained 20.5% in the 2019 European elections and were considered a mass party (Volkspartei) with options to reach the Chancellery. Sinking in the polls, it’s time to ask why.

CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann has challenged Scholz to call a vote of confidence in Parliament. “It is a disaster. Either the traffic light changes course or it has to clear the way for new elections,” he said this Sunday. This Monday, a government spokesperson ruled out that Scholz is considering calling early elections, as President Emmanuel Macron has done in France. Conservatives blame the government for the AfD’s success in the European elections. “Traffic light policies are strengthening the far right in Germany,” said Jens Spahn, a member of the CDU executive committee.

AfD success

The counterpoint to the gloomy mood of the coalition is provided by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose leaders enthusiastically celebrated the electoral success on Sunday night. “We are the second force and the most voted in the east!” exclaimed its co-president, Alice Weidel. The far-right formation swept through the federated states that formed the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), where three regional elections are being held this fall that are upsetting the rest of the German democratic forces. Polls attribute them comfortable victories with more than 30% of the votes in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony.

These forecasts come after a court confirmed the AfD’s nationwide classification as a party suspected of extremism and when three regional groups are already considered definitively far-right. Nor have the successive scandals related to accusations of espionage and corruption in recent months deterred its voters, predominantly men and younger than followers of other parties.

The elections in the three eastern states in which the AfD is the favorite threaten the policy of the traditional formations of rejecting any collaboration with extremists, the famous cordon sanitaire, which in Germany is known as a firewall (brandmauer). With the parties in Scholz’s coalition at a minimum and the push of the new party of the controversial left-wing populist politician Sahra Wagenknecht, the calculations for governing eastern Germany leaving aside the AfD are reduced. The agreement of multiple democratic formations will be necessary and it is likely that local CDU leaders will pressure their leadership in Berlin to allow them to explore collaborations with the ultras.

The German political landscape is even more fragmented with the emergence of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which with only six months of existence has achieved 6.2% of the votes. Not only has it surpassed its leader’s former party, Die Linke (The Left); also to the liberals who govern with Scholz. The bulk of the electorate of this populist formation that is difficult to fit into the left-right binomial—it mixes social justice proposals with classic far-right postulates such as toughening immigration laws—is also in eastern Germany.

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