Florian Braun rings.

It's the twenty-second front door he's standing in front of this afternoon in the Wahn district of Cologne.

A woman opens the door, slippers on her feet, the dog wants to push past her, something is simmering on the stove at the end of the hall.

"Hello, Florian Braun, I'm the man from the posters," introduced the CDU MP.

"I wanted to bring you my brochure."

He hands her a stack of paper with a pen hanging from it.

The woman looks at it briefly: "I know you from the last election, you were here too," she says.

"I've already voted, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you," she says with a smile.

“I hope it works out for you this time, too.” Braun says thank you, bye, bye.

Timo Steppat

Editor in Politics.

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Most visits to doorstep election campaigns, which have become increasingly popular with politicians from the SPD and CDU in recent years, last five minutes.

The message: You don't have to come to politics, it comes to you.

In 2017, when Braun ran for the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia for the first time, he rang more doors than any other Christian Democratic candidate, he says.

It's part of a recipe for success that MPs with direct mandates like to invoke: be close to the people, fight for every single vote.

The Cologne constituency of Porz, many single-family housing estates and a social hotspot, was red for decades, in SPD hands.

Then the CDU won, then the SPD and last time Braun was ahead for the CDU.

Porz is a competitive rotating constituency.

Sometimes like this; sometimes like that.

Both have no chance on the state list

Five years ago, Braun won the election by 377 votes.

"If you win that close, next time you know: Every campaign stand, every event can make the difference," he says, while driving the car with his likeness printed on it through the district.

He visits the engine manufacturer Deutz, which is located in his constituency.

During the tour, Braun asks a lot of questions and allows himself to be shown the test station for a hydrogen engine.

He encourages Deutz employees to contact him if there are problems or concerns.

The next day, Braun invites him to a barbecue in his parents' garden, and the next day to a hairdressing salon for early morning shopping.

If there is a gap in the schedule, he campaigns door-to-door.

"It starts early in the morning and sometimes I come home at 12 o'clock at night and then answer emails, and then it continues in the morning the next morning.

With election day, however, you have a clear goal in mind,” he says.

Three months ago, Braun, 32, became a father for the first time.

He is very grateful to his wife for having his back free, he says.

Braun has to fight if he wants to stay in parliament.

He is in 24th place on the CDU state list, and the list did not move at all in the 2017 election – the party had won so many mandates directly that it was not entitled to any more.

This time it looks like it again.

Christian Joisten, Braun's challenger from the SPD, is number 79 in the state list;

he too is involved in the election campaign.

Appointments from morning to evening.

He is chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Cologne city council and now wants to represent Porz in the state parliament.

Just like brown before.

But only one can win.

Just ten years ago, the seven state constituencies in Cologne were red.

In the forecasts that exist for the upcoming election, only one of the seven is considered safe for the SPD, Mülheim on the right bank of the Rhine - which is why the internal party fight for the candidacy was fought particularly hard.

Joisten considers the SPD results from ten years ago to be deceptive.

From his point of view, the Social Democrats benefited from the strong national trend at the time.

After almost two years in the minority government, the then Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft was carried by the SPD into a red-green coalition - and brought her party a good 39 percent.