It is a bankruptcy of historical proportions. About ten percentage points less than last time. The worst result since nine hundred and fifty-four. The absolute majority won back only five years ago already lost again.
This election evening hits the CSU in the march.
At the same time, however, the party has been able to prepare for this evening in the past few weeks thanks to the gradual decline in its poll numbers. It was, even if top candidate Markus Söder and party leader Horst Seehofer always stressed the opposite in the election campaign, virtually shrunk from the self-proclaimed Bavarian state party to a normal party.
As then in the course of the election evening, the projections even move in the direction of 38 percent, some even seems like a relief. This is of course a deceptive feeling.
The fact is: the CSU now needs a coalition partner. And fast, because in Bavaria, the state parliament must meet no later than three weeks after the election. And for the election of the Prime Minister then only one week is provided.
Against the CSU is no coalition in the state parliament without the AfD possible - some surveys had recently predicted differently, and in the CSU they now evaluate this impossibility, which was previously so natural, as a success. The fact that the Free Voters are now in favor of an alliance that calls the Christian socials "stable" and "bourgeois" throughout the evening is viewed positively. In the polls, it had at times looked as if it would be enough only for a twofold alliance with the Greens.
Having to go into a coalition with the Greens, the big winner of the evening - that would have been the maximum sentence for many in the CSU. Instead, Prime Minister Söder now says that he has a "clear preference for a bourgeois government" - and then get rid of some hateful sentences about the Greens. Later, the CSU leader Thomas replies to the question whether the Greens are not a bourgeois party: "No."
Söder is not one who can pretend to be good. The 51-year-old can be seen on the disappointment. After Söder's short speech to supporters after the first projections, his lips are always falling down, he has to force himself to smile a little, to raise his thumbs up. For a like Söder even a medium disaster is first a disaster.
"Of course this is not a nice day for the CSU," he says. The party takes the result seriously: "with humility". It's a new role for Söder, the Christian social jumping field. He will have to learn it, like the whole party.
However, Söder also says: "We have received a clear government mandate." And so are the key words that you hear from the prime minister, the party leader and many CSU leaders above all: stability and responsibility. It depends on the Christsozialen, so the argument that you now come quickly to a functioning government.
But then there is the question of what the CSU learns from this choice, which has trimmed it to normal - and what consequences it draws from it, especially of a personal nature.
more on the subject
Landtag election Bavarian Federal Quake
Lightning analysis for Bayern Election People Parties
Landtag election Greens are the strongest force in Bavaria's major cities
The answer: None this evening. But already on Monday in the board meeting Seehofer in particular will have to face criticism. Many in the CSU see him as the main culprit for the result because of his acting as Federal Minister of the Interior.
"It will be necessary to modernize the head and members," says former CSU leader Erwin Huber on record. Main - that goes against his successor Seehofer, who had replaced Huber after the electoral failure in 2008 (43.4 percent).
But the big uprising against the party chairman is initially missing. The chairman of the Bavarian Young Union, Hans Reichhart, says: "Today we stay good." Prime Minister Söder also has no interest in the Seehofer debate this evening.
The party leader himself steps on the small stage in the CSU parliamentary group one hour after the polls closed: "This is not a nice day," he says. But now his party must "concentrate fully on the question of government formation in the coming days".
The reservations from the CSU to his person knows Seehofer, but he seems relaxed this evening. "We would like to discuss it over there," he says when asked about the consequences for personnel - but not this evening. "My job as party leader is to keep our political family together." The fault analysis, says Seehofer, will be done "as always with great care and then draw the necessary conclusions".