Merkel’s Bavarian Allies Bleed Votes to Liberal Greens and Far Right

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Katharina Schulze, right, and Ludwig Hartmann, the co-lead candidates of the Greens, on Sunday at the Bavarian Parliament in Munich.CreditCreditSean Gallup/Getty Images

By Katrin Bennhold

Oct. 14, 2018

BERLIN — Voters in Bavaria, the German state that formed the front line of the 2015 migration crisis, abandoned the conservative allies of Chancellor Angela Merkel in droves in an election on Sunday. But rather than shifting their allegiance mostly to the anti-immigrant far right, they gave the biggest boost to a rising liberal force: the pro-refugee Greens.

The Christian Social Union, a key component of Ms. Merkel’s fragile coalition government, remains the strongest party in the region. But it lost the absolute majority it had held in Bavaria almost without interruption since the 1960s.

It was a political earthquake that confirmed not only the continuing disintegration of support for Ms. Merkel’s government, but also the striking decline of big-tent political parties across Europe: A onetime environmental protest movement is now the second-strongest political force in Bavaria and Germany.

The effects will be felt in Berlin, where some already question whether Ms. Merkel can serve out her full fourth term. “The Bavarian result further destabilizes Merkel and her government,” said Heinrich Oberreuter, a veteran political analyst and an expert on the Bavarian conservatives.

Perhaps the most interesting outcome of Sunday’s election is that anti-immigrant slogans — calling for an end to “asylum tourism” and vowing to protect Germany’s borders — failed to give the far right or the conservatives echoing it the major lift many had predicted a few months ago.

The Greens, running on a platform of open borders, liberal values and the fight against climate change, appealed to an electorate that has diversified from the days when Bavaria, Germany’s southernmost state, was dominated by socially conservative and rural voters.

“Society has changed, Bavaria has changed and Bavarian voters have changed — but the mainstream parties have slept through that change,” Mr. Oberreuter said.

Natascha Kohnen, the leading candidate of the Social Democrats, whose vote share collapsed on Sunday.CreditLukas Barth-Tuttas/EPA, via Shutterstock

Nowhere was this more striking than on the issue of migration, the subject that has animated and divided Germany like no other since the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants in 2015.

“Migration policy is one reason for the upswing in the Greens,” who received votes from liberal conservatives appalled at how much their old party veered to the right during the campaign, Mr. Oberreuter said.

Forty percent of new Green supporters across Germany come from the center right of the political spectrum, according to research by the Forsa Institute.

At the same time migration was also the reason a more nationalist faction inside the conservatives defected to the far right in the Bavarian vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany party was expected to win 10.3 percent of the vote, allowing it to enter the Bavarian Parliament for the first time.

Yet while the far right received far more attention during what was a noisy and at times nasty campaign.

It was the Greens whose vote looked set to nearly double, to 17.2 percent, making the party the second-strongest in a region long considered one of Germany’s most conservative. They also came first in some major Bavarian cities, including Munich where they were on course to win more than 30 percent. They also came first in many of Bavaria’s biggest cities, in some cases winning more than 30 percent.

As Barbara Stamm, a veteran conservative lawmaker in Bavaria, put it on Sunday night, “You can’t win as many votes on the right as you lose in the middle.”

Over all, the Christian Social Union was on course to see its vote share slump to 37.5 percent, exit polls suggested. And Ms. Merkel’s other coalition partner, the Social Democrats, collapsed to a level of support lower than the far right’s, a result that some see as a harbinger of further losses for Ms. Merkel’s conservatives. Already at a postwar low, in two weeks her party is expected to lose ground — and possibly the election — in another regional ballot, in the state of Hesse.

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Alice Weidel, center, the Alternative for Germany chairwoman, cheering with supporters in Mamming, Germany, on Sunday as early exit poll results were announced.CreditLennart Preiss/EPA, via Shutterstock

The far right was quick to make the connection. Calling the Bavarian result a “signal for Merkel,” Katrin Ebner-Steiner of the Alternative for Germany told supporters on Sunday night, “Merkel has to go.”

The Greens celebrated a victory that only a year ago few would have thought possible.

“My heart jumped!” Katharina Schulze, the leader of the Bavarian Greens, said shortly after the first forecasts were made public. Anton Hofreiter, a lawmaker for the Greens in Berlin, vowed on Sunday that the party would not just change Bavaria: “We will change the whole federal republic.”

The party’s strategy of promoting a positive, modern and inclusive narrative appears to be working: A recent survey asking voters across Germany which party they would choose in the next election found that the Greens are now the country’s second party, only nine points behind Ms. Merkel’s conservatives.

Regional elections in Germany once attracted little attention elsewhere. But in the current polarized political climate, the Bavarian vote is seen as a measure of how much the political battle lines have been redrawn in Germany and Europe.

In a sign that the election galvanized voters, turnout on Sunday was at 73 percent, noticeably up from 64 percent five years ago.

In Berlin, both of Ms. Merkel’s coalition partners may react to their poor Bavarian showing in ways that will further weaken the chancellor. The Social Democrats, deeply divided over whether they should even be in government with Ms. Merkel, are due to revisit the question next year and might do so sooner.

The Bavarian conservatives, who have almost brought down the government twice over the past three months, are no more likely to compromise on regional interests after their weak showing.

One open question is whether the party’s leader, Horst Seehofer, will survive Sunday’s drubbing — both as party chief and interior minister in Ms. Merkel’s cabinet. His departure would free Ms. Merkel of a longtime vocal critic.

But on Sunday night at least, Mr. Seehofer seemed to have no intention of leaving. “I will of course continue to look after my duties,” he said.