There is hardly any reason to cheer in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus on Sunday evening at 6 p.m.

The corona pandemic has ensured that there are comparatively few party friends at the headquarters of the CDU, who remain silent when the miserable result is announced.

Only when it became clear that it might not be enough for the alliance of the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party, which was so fiercely opposed by the Union on the home stretch of the election campaign, something like applause can be heard in the foyer of the Adenauer House.

Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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Eckart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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That seems to be one of the successes of the Union election campaign.

Seventy-one percent of the Union's voters, Infratest dimap announced on Sunday, had chosen the Union Party primarily to prevent a left-wing alliance.

Not one of the successes: 86 percent of the former Union voters would have liked another candidate.

The first reaction of a prominent CDU politician comes from the television screen.

The losses “hurt”, says General Secretary Paul Ziemiak.

After all, he does bring a possibility of forming a government into play.

"Future coalition" is what he calls the alliance of CDU, CSU, Greens and FDP, the so-called Jamaica coalition, which many in the Union are striving for.

At around 6.30 p.m., Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet still did not appear at the microphone, after all, the desk is being pushed from the edge to the center and cleaned. Bad and tight results usually have to be discussed internally before they can be publicly commented on.

Then, the polling stations have been closed for three quarters of an hour, comes Laschet. With him, not only Chancellor Angela Merkel appears, but also a large part of the party celebrities: Volker Bouffier, the Prime Minister of Hesse, Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn, the Saarland Prime Minister Tobias Hans and two handfuls of others. Laschet has consulted with his management bodies and does not seem desperate despite the historically poor result for the CDU. On the contrary, it gives the impression of determination. He speaks of the “successful final spurt” in the election campaign and makes it clear that he regards the election result as a mandate to form a government. Laschet says that the Federal Chancellor has to be someone who manages to combine opposites and develop a good program for the next four years.“I am ready for this task.” Merkel and the CDU leadership are behind him when he says this. There is strong applause in the party headquarters.

The right candidate?

"Old news"

The CDU chairman brings the man into play who would also have liked to become a candidate for chancellor.

Laschet said he would work with Markus Söder to form a coalition.

The two have clearly coordinated.

The CSU chairman is in Berlin on Sunday evening.

He shows himself ready to hold talks with Laschet about an “alliance of reason” so that Laschet becomes chancellor.

It is about a "new government of modernity, but also of stability".

A little later, Laschet and Söder sit next to each other in the television studio, in the “Berliner Runde”, and discuss the election results with the leaders of the other parties. If Söder repeatedly teased Laschet during the election campaign, which did not make the two chairmen of the Union parties look like a happy couple, he looks mild two hours after the polling stations have closed. The question of whether he would have been the better candidate for chancellor is really "yesterday's news," says Söder. He has great respect for Laschet. "We have, Armin, once again increased the pace in the last few weeks," says Söder. Now you have to turn the result into a government. That sounds downright harmonious.

Before their chairman commented, other CSU politicians were initially reluctant. The few who have come to the party headquarters in Munich seem relieved after the first forecast was announced that the CSU result will probably not be as bad as feared: 33 percent, five percentage points more than the latest Bavarian trend. CSU General Secretary Markus Blume speaks in a first statement of a "decent CSU result". At first, Blume does not want to commit himself whether the Union should try to lead a government as a runner-up. A bourgeois government is the goal. Now it is necessary to wait for election evening. The chairman of the CSU regional group, Alexander Dobrindt, says: "Various options are now conceivable." It is "a result that one does not want",now it is about “trying to form coalitions with this result”.