Saarland, a western German state, is hosting a state election. Since December, this will be the country’s first attempt at the ballot box when Chancellor Olaf Scholz took office.
BERLIN (AP), — Sunday’s election in Saarland, western Germany, will mark the country’s first attempt at the polls since December when Chancellor Olaf Scholz took office.
According to polls, Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats are leading in the race for the state legislative election. This is even though the region has been led since 1999 by former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party.
This is not necessarily due to Scholz’s three-party coalition’s turbulent first 100 days. Russia’s war with Ukraine prompted Scholz to change German defense policy and allow large numbers of refugees to enter Germany. Germany is also struggling with coronavirus infections. Germany has seen more than 200,000 cases of the virus per day.
It’s also the first of three state elections within two months, all in regions currently governed by CDU governors. This will set the tone for the next year. On May 15, the most important vote will be in Germany’s largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Saarland is located near the French border and is one of Germany’s smallest states with almost 1 million inhabitants. The coalition of the CDU, Social Democrats, and Social Democrats has run it for the past ten years.
According to polls, Social Democrat Anke Riehlinger is voters’ preferred candidate. She has been the state’s deputy governor since 2014 and economy minister ever since. Tobias Hans, the incumbent from the center-right, is trailing.
The CDU’s national leader, Friedrich Merz downplays the importance of his party’s poll results before Sunday’s vote and cites local factors.
Merz stated, “We have always been great in Saarland even when the left was divided. That is over now.”
He pointed out a sharp drop in support for the hard left Left Party’s co-founder, Oskar Lafontaine (a former Social Democrat governor of Saarland in the 1980s and 90s), who recently left the party. In September’s national elections, it narrowly avoided being expelled from the German parliament.
