ING Economic and Financial Analysis | Oct 29, 2018 12:53AM ET
Two weeks after the Bavarian elections, voters in the state Hesse confirmed the ongoing process of political defragmentation and a transition to a post-Merkel era - making German national politics even more complicated.
More than four million people were eligible to go to the ballots in the state Hesse. Even though this is only roughly 7% of all eligible voters in Germany, the result of the regional elections was both a reflection of the ongoing process of defragmentation of the political landscape and a step towards the gradual end of Chancellor Angela Merkel's era.
h3 The results/h3Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won 27.2% of the vote, down from 38.3% in the last election in 2013, while the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens came in at 19.2%, according to the latest polls at 8 pm CET. Both the CDU and the SPD lost some 10 percentage points of the votes.
While the CDU had its worst result in the state in more than 50 years, the SPD recorded its worst result since World War II. The Greens, which are the junior coalition partner of the CDU in the state government of Hesse, gained some 9 percentage points. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in at 12.8%, from 4.1%, and is now represented in all 16 state parliaments. The liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Left Party also made it into Hessian parliament.
h3 Implications for German national politics/h3The analysis of the votes show that these state elections were clearly affected by federal politics and the ongoing tensions in the grand coalition in Berlin. While small changes in the official results can still have a significant impact on who will govern the state of Hessia, a few broad implications for German politics are already now clear:
If anything, the results of the Hessian elections will lead to more unrest in the SPD than in the CDU. The CDU still has the opportunity of a managed and gradual transition, while the SPD cannot easily see any other way out than to exit the grand coalition, eventually. Together with the fact that it is still unclear how the CSU will behave in the coming months, the ingredients for new government tensions and snap elections before 2021 are clearly there. Currently, the only counter-argument is that new elections would probably bring an even more complicated result.
All in all, the Hessian elections are not so much another trigger for political unrest but rather a reflection and another milestone on a gradual transition of German politics. In two ways, a transition towards a more fragmented political landscape and a transition to a post-Merkel era.
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