Less than two months before the federal elections and the end of the Merkel era, the process of regulating their succession seems more like an assessment center than like diadoch fights.
The election campaign is peculiarly lukewarm, although the flood disaster should lead to a polarizing argument about the climate policy, which is so important to voters, as evidenced by surveys.
Eckart Lohse
Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.
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The fact that it doesn't turn out this way is primarily due to the three candidates for chancellor.
Neither Armin Laschet, who is standing for the Union, nor Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, and also not the Greens applicant Annalena Baerbock are of the Haudrauf type.
The only one who belongs in this category, CSU leader Markus Söder, was not allowed to become a candidate for the Union and, in view of Laschet's reluctance, is desperately on the sidelines of the election arena.
Baerbock and Laschet have, apart from their nature not prone to aggression, scandals or scandals on their legs, to which they react defensively instead of offensive.
Scholz may sometimes pinch his arm to be able to believe that his role as finance minister in dealing with the really spectacular Wirecard scandal seems to have already been forgotten.
Green-red-red would be a stopgap solution
But it is not only due to the character of the applicants that they move like a chess tournament. They also do it because the outcome of the election is completely open. It is quite possible that after September 26th you will be dependent on each other. If Scholz pushes himself ahead of the other two when it comes to questions about popularity in some surveys, the SPD is far behind the Union, if not that far behind the Greens. So much will depend on how much the voters orientate themselves towards the candidates and how much they orientate themselves towards the parties.
It can be considered certain that the AfD will move back into the Bundestag, but will not become the subject of coalition deliberations. For the other end of the political spectrum, the Left Party, although not full, is stable in the polls over five percent, so it will probably also move into the Bundestag. One shouldn't rule out government participation in an alliance with the Greens and the SPD, but for the two larger parties it would only be an emergency solution, for which it would currently hardly be enough mathematically.
It is very likely that the CDU and CSU together will end up clearly ahead of the other parties. If someone had said before the highly controversial candidate decision in April that the Union, with Laschet at the top, would have established itself around the 30 percent mark in August, Söder would have been the first to deny that, and many others would have been dubious. In addition, the Greens were even just ahead of the Union for a short time in the spring. Now it has a reasonably stable lead of seven to ten percentage points. The lead of the Greens over the SPD has also melted to around five percentage points.
All in all, the situation for the Union has stabilized since the spring. Even if Laschet does not manage to collect points on the Chancellor candidate account in the role of the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister in coping with the consequences of the flood, and if, according to the latest RTL / ntv survey, he is well behind Scholz and Baerbock in popularity and at 13 Percent is only a third of the value for Söder, he has a good chance of becoming Federal Chancellor. In contrast to many others in the Union, he does not declare black-green to be the preferred coalition. But since it is foreseeable the only possible two-party alliance (CDU and CSU once taken as a partner) and the course of both the CDU and Laschets cannot be regarded as fundamentally incompatible with that of the Greens,Much speaks for a black-green federal government under a Chancellor Laschet.
Will Lindner be the decisive person?
The Greens would not categorically reject that.
At the moment, however, its role is difficult to assess.
Candidate Baerbock had given the impression for a long time that she longed for nothing as much as to inherit Merkel, but after her series of breakdowns she is extremely cautious about her ambitions to become chancellor.
That can be real because she's never seen such a wave of public criticism before.
This can also be tactical to reassure swing voters who want to see the Greens in the government, but who do not want a Chancellor who is completely inexperienced in the executive business.
However, if the Greens landed before the SPD and with the help of partners could conquer the Chancellery, Baerbock would not be able to avoid doing that.
At least the willing government in the SPD, above all Chancellor candidate Scholz, would of course find this more attractive than the opposition. At this point, a man and a party would come into play who had fought in the bushes after the previous federal election, shortly before the negotiations on a Jamaica alliance were completed: Christian Lindner and the FDP he led. In the end, Lindner could be the one who is decisive for forming a coalition. If the Greens and the SPD need the FDP, which is around ten percent, to form a government, Lindner could set conditions. It is no secret that he would like to become finance minister. He does give the impression that he and his party prefer a Jamaica alliance with the Union and the Greens and that a traffic light with the Greens and the Reds is unrealistic.However, if both alliances were mathematically possible, it would depend on who made the better offer to Lindner and the FDP: Baerbock or Laschet. Or Scholz, if the SPD were in front of the Greens.