A few minutes after the election forecast, the CDU and SPD begin to argue about the interpretation.

The former federal minister Jens Spahn from the CDU is immediately on the spot and believes that there is now an opportunity to "definitely open a bottle of sparkling wine".

And when SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert claimed in a conversation with him that the Social Democrats should now govern with the Greens because the state government had been voted out, Spahn replies that he writes "this contortion simply as a result of the shock".

That the traffic light will “flicker” and that the lights will soon go out for the red-yellow-green federal government is a hope that is stirring in the Berlin party headquarters of the CDU;

because of the coalition tensions about Ukraine policy anyway, but now also in view of the extrapolation of the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).

There the Union was several percentage points ahead of the SPD.

There were doubts that there was even enough for an alliance of social democrats and greens.

"The CDU is back," said Friedrich Merz, the party's federal chairman, on Sunday evening.

It was "also a federal political mood test".

Wüst achieved an “outstanding result”.

In the chairman's calculations, this now means that the possibly decisive Greens could first open themselves to cooperation with the CDU in Düsseldorf and then perhaps later in Berlin.

Merz is doing everything to praise the Greens these days: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is doing a great job, he says, Economics and Environment Minister Robert Habeck is doing an excellent job, and the Green Co-Chairman Ricarda Lang is said to have been praised by Merz several times have been.

Apart from genuine recognition, there is obviously the hope that the SPD, despite a possible election defeat, can be prevented from taking over the government as the runner-up in a coalition with the Greens in Düsseldorf.

While the polls predicted a head-to-head race until recently, the federal CDU had once again mobilized all its forces.

There is a lot at stake in NRW.

Elections there were often the beginning of the end, for example in 2005 when Gerhard Schröder (SPD) became Chancellor.

Friedrich Merz, himself a Sauerlander, knows that. His test as the new party chairman was not in the small Saarland, nor on the coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, where elections were last held.

It is located in the industrial heartland of the republic with almost 18 million inhabitants.

The result can provide information on whether the impression is spreading in the CDU that the party is striving again and whether Merz is useful in this.

After elections it was a draw for him in front of NRW this year.

The CDU lost in Saarland and most recently won in Schleswig-Holstein.

But winning North Rhine-Westphalia is seen as setting the course.

Until the polling stations closed, it was a catch-up race for the top candidate Hendrik Wüst, but also for Merz.

For too long, the SPD was sure of victory.

Shortly after the general election, she had increased her lead to almost ten percentage points.

The Scholz train rolled.

In Düsseldorf, Merz and Wüst were able to at least slow him down.

Because the more the SPD advertised its candidate Thomas Kutschaty as tomorrow's prime minister, the more old CDU voters found their way back to the Union.

Numerous posters by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, put up in recent days, do not seem to have improved the situation.