Yesterday’s local election (Kommunalwahlen) results in Nordrhein-Westfalen only confirmed the voter trends over the last couple of months. The two mainstream parties – CDU and SPD – continue to lose votes. The CDU ended up with 43.4%, while the SPD fell to a historic low of 31.7%. Fortunately, the extremist parties did not benefit as they did in the east or in Saarbrücken; the big gainers were the Greens with 10.3 % and the FDP, with just over 6%.
Gerhard Schröder tried to put a happy face on the dismal results, and there is consensus that the SPD has in fact begun to regain (slowly) some the ground lost over the last year. It is clear that the big loser is Angela Merkel, whose claim for leadership of the CDU looks more and more tenuous each day. There is a growing chorus of criticism of her weak leadership:
Der Chef der niedersächsischen CDU-Landesgruppe, Hermann Kues, rief die CDU-Vorsitzende Angela Merkel auf, die Partei straffer zu führen. Merkel müsse ihre Führungsrolle nutzen, anderenfalls gehe die Führung schnell verloren, sagte Kues dem “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger”. Die Frankfurter Oberbürgermeisterin Petra Roth forderte eine klare Programmatik der Union. “Zurzeit haben wir keine klares Programm. Es wird nicht die Wahrheit gesagt”, sagte die CDU-Politikerin in der ARD. Das Volk wolle geführt werden.
It will be interesting to see if Angela Merkel can hold onto the power she has worked so long and hard to achieve.
