There won't be another triell. The format is to be understood as a historical anomaly that emerged during Angela Merkel's last term in office. The curious situation arose that with the Greens, of all things, the weakest parliamentary group in the Bundestag received a prominent media role through the nomination of a candidate for chancellor. The good poll numbers of the Greens in the spring are still valid as a Triell justification. With the same argumentation, Pro7Sat.1 could have unloaded the candidate Annalena Baerbock again. After all, based on surveys too, she had no chance at the Chancellery on Sunday evening.
However, this view fails to recognize the special circumstances of this election campaign.
Until the beginning of the pandemic last year, the Greens had managed to distinguish themselves from the perspective of many voters as the only alternative to a grand coalition that was widely perceived as worn-out.
Although the initial high approval ratings for the pandemic policy among the Union parties caused their demoscopic pseudo-bloom, that changed with increasing dissatisfaction with inadequacies.
The freshly nominated green candidate for chancellor had to struggle with a peculiarity: She began her election campaign with polls at the limit of the maximum vote potential of her party.
Resurrection of the camp election campaign
Their secret of success was the establishment of an independent position vis-à-vis the former popular parties. In addition, there was the media presence of climate change as the most important future topic, where environmental policy is traditionally seen as a green core competence. It is against this background that this last triall must be considered. His result was the abandonment of the independence of the Greens as the central hinge of any government formation. Instead, the audience saw the resurrection of the old camp election campaign: red-green against black-yellow, but without the participation of the FDP. As is well known, the latter had renounced the formal nomination of a candidate for chancellor.
Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Annalena Baerbock demonstrated a warm agreement on practically all subject areas. The green candidate for chancellor only tried to maintain an equidistance to the top dogs in our party system when it came to climate policy. There Scholz "underlined", so Baerbock, that "the freedom of the grandchildren is not so important to him." Scholz decided against a replica in the same tone, but did not want to spare his ally a delicate hint: Even under the green-black coalition in Baden-Württemberg only twelve wind turbines have been approved.
In the end, Baerbock was only concerned with the balance of power in the red-green camp. Too great a distance from the Social Democrats ultimately reduces one's own weight. This was formulated accordingly in their closing words: The CDU belongs in the opposition, according to their de facto rejection of a black-green coalition.