Elections in Bavaria and Hesse: Government panics as AfD becomes second strongest party
Does anyone remember the Germany Pact? It's been a month since Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced this. The traffic light coalition will work with the Union and the states to overcome the economic crisis in Germany. The media reported widely on it. And what has happened since then? Nothing. Nothing at all. The Chancellor announces something in the Bundestag, the media broadcasts it millions of times across the country - and then nothing happens. A meaningless word that disappeared faster than a fart in an elevator.
The federal government is in crisis. The numbers from the state elections in Hesse and Bavaria say this clearly. But it is more than a coalition crisis. It is a crisis of the cartel parties, a crisis of the all-party coalition, which was announced in February 2020 when Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) ordered the annulment of the election of Thomas Kemmerich (FDP) in Thuringia - and which then led Germany through the pandemic.
This all-party coalition has built a “firewall” against the AfD. The cartel parties do not work with the AfD. They prevent their candidates from becoming vice-presidents in the parliaments - even though they would be entitled to these positions. They are refusing to give the Erasmus Foundation money, which the Constitutional Court has ruled that the AfD-affiliated foundation is entitled to. And anyone who even points out obvious processes in connection with an AfD district administrator, as CDU leader Friedrich Merz did, will be massively punished by the party cartel in politics and the media.
According to initial surveys in Hesse and Bavaria, this AfD is now the second strongest party. These two West German federal states together generate more than a quarter of Germany's wealth. The AfD is already the second strongest force there. In the East the party is on the way to becoming the strongest party. Against this background, a firewall policy that even ignores rulings by Germany's highest court is becoming increasingly questionable.
About 9.4 million people were eligible to vote for the new state legislature in Bavaria and around 4.3 million in neighboring Hesse, a region that includes Germany’s financial capital, Frankfurt. Both states were already led by the country’s main opposition Union bloc, made up of the Christian Democratic Union and the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union.
Projections for ARD and ZDF public television based on exit polls and well-advanced counting showed the CSU, which has led Bavaria since 1957, extending that run with support of nearly 37% — little changed from five years ago and around 20 points ahead of its nearest rival. In Hesse, the CDU was seen winning about 34% of the vote, making gains and also far ahead of its rivals.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has risen to second place in national polls behind the Union, won’t be a factor in determining the states’ new governments, as other parties refused to work with it.
But it looked likely to finish second in Hesse and possibly also in Bavaria. Projections showed it taking about 18% of the vote in Hesse and 16% in Bavaria, improving significantly on lower double-digit showings when the two states last voted in 2018.
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