North-Rhine Westphalia is Germany’s largest state, almost as large as the Netherlands. It was a traditional SPD fiefdom during the time of Helmut Kohl, but in 2005 it became a CDU state. Surely, if the SPD was on the march, ready to turn Germany’s regional politics red as it did the chancellery in last year’s election, a state like North-Rhine Westphalia would return to the party?
But the big news from yesterday’s federal state elections is that the SPD, the party of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, scored its worst-ever result in Westphalia: less than 27 per cent of the vote. The CDU won with 35.5 per cent and will probably form a coalition with the Greens. The FDP, the free-market liberals that form the third leg of Scholz’s national coalition, also lost badly, down 7 per cent to just over 5 per cent. The so-called ‘traffic light coalition’ in Berlin seems to work only for one party, the Greens, and only for two politicians: Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, the party’s joint leaders.
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