It's not a declaration of love to the traffic light.

Christian Lindner is at the FDP party headquarters in Berlin on Monday and assesses the outcome of the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The coalition with the SPD and the Greens was not "the political dream" of the FDP.

"We govern in the traffic light out of state political responsibility because the CDU and CSU were unwilling and unable to form a government after the federal election." Lindner is clearly looking for someone to blame.

Helen Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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In the home country of the federal chairman, the FDP only just got over the five percent hurdle on Sunday.

For a while, on election day, she even had to fear that it might fail.

Lindner reports on Monday about the "dramatic slump", especially among voters over the age of 60.

During talks during the street election campaign, they complained about the federal government's relief measures.

They wanted to know why the energy flat rate of 300 euros was not also paid to pensioners.

"Although it wasn't our own model at all, nor our project, it was associated with us in a special way," complains the Federal Minister of Finance.

The culprit has been found: the participation of the FDP in a federal government with SPD and Greens.

Not that Christian Lindner wants to derive immediate consequences from this.

The FDP continues to work reliably with the coalition partners, it is faithful to the contract.

Whether and how there are party-political effects for the FDP must be assessed later.

In times of war and crisis you can't deal with something like that.

Lindner doesn't think about Jamaica

Lindner does not want to think about a change in the middle of the race, although there are enough votes in the Bundestag for a Jamaica alliance with the Union and the Greens.

"Realities are what they are," he says when asked about it.

His view of the Union is still critical.

Lindner presents neither their demands for taxes and duties nor those in energy policy as conclusive.

The SPD is much more modest on Monday than on the evening of the election, when General Secretary Kevin Kühnert and party leader Lars Klingbeil, despite the historically poor result, wanted to recognize a government mandate for the Social Democrats with some chutzpah.

"We clearly lost the race," said Klingbeil at noon in the Willy-Brandt-Haus after a presidium meeting in a clearly different pitch.

The CDU held North Rhine-Westphalia.

Klingbeil wants to explain the arrogant appearance of the previous evening by saying that he did not yet know the final election result, according to which the SPD is nine percentage points behind the Union.

However, the defeat of the Social Democrats was so clear after the first forecast that other SPD politicians, such as Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, immediately admitted it.

However, Klingbeil maintains that the SPD "is ready to take responsibility", even if the CDU first has to hold talks.

Top candidate Thomas Kutschaty only speaks of “conceivable coalitions that North Rhine-Westphalia has never seen before”.

The SPD offers Greens and FDP talks.