Hamburg voters punish Merkel party
Support for CDU in city at an all-time low
BERLIN: Senior members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives gathered yesterday to decide on a leadership accession plan after a state election drubbing in Hamburg added urgency to their search.
Voters handed Ms Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) their worst-ever result in Hamburg on Sunday, punishing them for flirting with the far-right in an eastern state and descending into a messy leadership battle.
The succession debate was blown wide open earlier this month when CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer unexpectedly said she would no longer seek to succeed her mentor Ms Merkel.
Mass-selling daily Bild dubbed the Hamburg result a “debacle” for the CDU, whose leadership crisis has raised questions over the future course of Europe’s largest economy.
The CDU slipped into third place in Hamburg, scoring just 11.2% in the northern port city, behind the Social Democrats (SPD), for whom the city is a stronghold, and the Greens.
“The dismal result for Ms Merkel’s centre-right CDU ... adds to the pressure on the party to resolve the leadership crisis fast,” Berenberg Bank analyst Holger Schmieding said.
Nationally, the Greens are second, behind Ms Merkel’s conservative bloc, and many commentators expect them to have a role in the next federal government.
Ms Merkel, chancellor for almost 15 years, has said she will not run again in the next federal election, due by October 2021.
Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer’s decision to give up her ambition of succeeding Ms Merkel came after an eastern branch of the CDU defied the national party and voted with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to install a state premier from a third party.
That broke a postwar consensus among established parties of shunning the far right.
Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer was to brief reporters after yesterday’s meeting of senior CDU officials and is expected to set out a timetable for a decision on the party chair and possibly the candidate for chancellor.
The n-tv broadcaster cited CDU sources as saying the party will hold an extraordinary congress either in April or May to elect a new leader.
Four or five candidates are jockeying for the jobs.
Daniel Guenther, premier of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, told broadcaster SWR that the CDU should clear up the leadership question quickly and hold a party conference “well before the summer break”.
Meanwhile, Greens national coleader Robert Habeck said that the result in Hamburg was “a great success”.
“We have a very challenging situation for democracy in Germany, and the
CDU is tied up in its own problems... It will be up to us to give the land direction and trust.”
There was good news too for the SPD, formerly the main challengers to the CDU for the chancellorship but recently overtaken by the Greens.
With just over 39%, incumbent SPD mayor Peter Tschentscher, 54, will likely remain in office as head of a “red-green” coalition in party bastion Hamburg.
With the Greens on the rise and CDU and SPD support eroding, Hamburg’s results reflect the broader political picture of fragmentation visible in Germany-wide polls.
But the prosperous port city with a proud left-of-centre tradition could yet be the first state to boot AfD out of parliament since its founding in 2013.
In many other parts of Germany, AfD polls in double digits, scoring above 20% in several recent state elections in the former communist east.