Merz’s party stumbles a year in German state elections with narrow defeats

Berlin — Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party made a disappointing start to a year packed with German state elections, suffering a narrow defeat in a key industrial region after the leading candidate powered the environmentalist Greens to victory from behind.

Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union was confident of winning back the governor’s office in Baden-Württemberg, a region of more than 11 million people in southwestern Germany that is home to automakers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, among many others. The country’s first and so far only Green governor, Winfried Kretschmann, is retiring after 15 years in charge of the traditional conservative heartland.

A CDU victory seemed long overdue despite the unpopularity of Merz’s 10-month-old federal government, which is struggling to get Germany’s stagnant economy moving. But the party’s poll lead shrank ahead of Sunday’s election to a green campaign focused on longtime federal lawmaker and former German agriculture minister Sem Özdemir.

The final results on Monday showed the Greens taking 30.2% of the vote, just ahead of the CDU on 29.7% – a gain compared to five years ago but not enough for victory. Germany’s far-right Alternative has more than doubled its support to 18.8%, mirroring its gains in last year’s national election. Merge’s partners in the federal government, the centre-left Social Democrats, lost half their support, polling an embarrassing 5.5%.

Ozdemir, 60, touted his experience and strongly favored the Greens’ relatively conservative image in Baden-Württemberg – in contrast to the party’s more left-wing approach nationally, where it is in opposition.

His 37-year-old CDU opponent, Manuel Hagel, was more or less famous and was not helped by a 2018 video recently posted by a Green federal lawmaker in which Hagel spoke of a visit to a school and the “brown eyes of a deer” of a female student.

The two parties are expected to govern Baden-Württemberg together, which has been in a coalition for the past 10 years, with Özdemir becoming Germany’s first state governor with Turkish roots.

Sunday is the first of five state elections this year. The next, on March 22, pits the national ruling parties against each other in neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate. It has been led by the Social Democrats since 1991, who are in a tight race with Merz’s CDU for first place.

In September, elections will be held in Berlin and in two regions in the former communist east, where the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is particularly strong and hopes to get its first state governor.

Jens Spahn, the conservatives’ parliamentary leader in Berlin, admitted Sunday’s result was “bittersweet” but pointed to his party’s gains and argued that Özdemir won by essentially hiding his green credentials. He argued that the federal government’s recent performance, including “the chancellor’s strong foreign policy performance,” was helpful.

Merz, who has visited Washington and Beijing in the past two weeks, has drawn criticism at times for spending too much time on foreign policy, which he rejects.

“His foreign policy presence can be really good, but he can gain popularity and only gain in the federal CDU elections if things go well domestically,” Trier University political science professor Uwe Jun told Phoenix television.

“They need significant reforms in the area of ​​social and economic policy,” Jun said.