Landslides, earthquakes or tectonic shifts: major political changes are often compared to natural phenomena. In this respect, election Sunday was stormy not only for the federal government, but also for Frankfurt. Because the winners of the election, the Greens, rose in favor of the voters by ten points to 24.6 percent, while the CDU fell from 8.3 points to 18.1 percent with a heavy loss of votes. Your worst election result. This means that the party that dominated Frankfurt politics until the local elections in March has slumped further - in the Bundestag election even only to third place behind the Greens and the SPD, which rose 2.4 points to 22.5 percent could work ahead. Come in addition,that the CDU has lost both direct mandates - and with it both of its MPs in Berlin. Because since Monday it has been clear that Bettina Wiesmann from constituency 183 barely made it into the Bundestag via the Hessian state list.
Martin Benninghoff
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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If you stick to the natural phenomenon again: The political color change is more than a snapshot, it is a kind of long-term, electoral political climate change in the city. Because the new Roman coalition of the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt would have achieved a solid majority of 63.3 percent after this election result. The results in other large cities show that Frankfurt is not alone with this shift to the left: In Stuttgart the CDU has lost twelve percentage points, in Hamburg 11.7 points. The Greens, on the other hand, gained significantly in double digits in many large cities such as Cologne and Hanover, and just under double digits in Frankfurt. That this will not remain a flash in the pan for the Main metropolis is shown by the successes of the Greens in the state elections in 2018, the European elections in 2019 and the local elections. Frankfurt has gone green.
Volt doesn't matter
Particularly noticeable are the voter hikes, which the Citizens' Office Statistics and Elections for Frankfurt took a close look at in the night from Sunday to Monday. The supporters of the CDU in the previous federal election in 2017 therefore defected mainly to the Greens and, to a lesser extent, to the camp of non-voters and the SPD. Every seventh vote for the Greens comes from a former CDU voter. The CDU lost much less votes to the FDP, the losses to the Left and, surprisingly, to the AfD are extremely low. Nevertheless, the relative success of the FDP, which received 14.8 percent of the second votes across the city, is at least symbolic in the struggle for the middle-class milieu in the middle: because in the - now one must say:earlier - CDU stronghold Westend-Süd, the FDP was able to benefit from the weakness of the CDU and emerged as the strongest political force.
What was already shown in the local elections and the subsequent coalition negotiations, this Bundestag election also confirms: The Greens and the FDP are closer to each other than the clichés about these two alleged antipodes suggest. The Greens were able to attract a considerable number of voters from the FDP. The exchange goes in both directions, with a clear list in favor of the Greens: While around 900 voters switched from the Greens to the FDP, the FDP gave 5000 to the Greens. The SPD, on the other hand, benefited from the weakness of the CDU, but also of the Left and the AfD, which are both shrinking with losses of 4.9 and 3.5 points. The success of Volt hoped for by its supporters did not materialize: the young party, which three years after its founding in Germany had reached 3.7 percent in the local elections from a standing start,only made it to 1.4 percent and does not play a role in this choice.