Greens score election victory in Germany’s car industry heartland
Germany’s affluent state of Baden-Württemberg will continue to be led by a Green premier, after the party narrowly beat chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU in a regional election dominated by economic concerns. The two parties are set to continue their long-running state coalition, with the CDU as the junior partner.
The Greens won just over 30 percent of the vote, narrowly ahead of the CDU, preliminary results showed. Almost 19 percent of voters chose the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), while little more than five percent opted for the Social Democrats (SPD).
The Greens’ surprise victory, following a dramatic catch-up race in the weeks before the vote, comes despite the fact that the region still saw a conservative shift compared with the last state election five years ago. While the CDU gained almost six percentage points and the AfD doubled its result, the Greens shed two percentage points, and support for the SPD halved.
Still, the result is a blow to unpopular chancellor Merz, who campaigned heavily in the state, as it underlines voter discontent with his leadership one year after the country’s federal elections.
Uniting climate action and the economy
However, local factors and personalities, rather than national party politics, determined the result in the structurally conservative region defined by deep-rooted industrial traditions, fiscal prudence, and rural identity outside its capital Stuttgart and other cities.
The economy (29%) topped the list of the issues that most influenced voters' decisions, followed by social security (17%), and climate and energy (16%).
While the victorious Green candidate Cem Özdemir, a former federal agricultural minister, was careful not to sound too progressive during the election campaign, the CDU’s candidate, Manuel Hagel, avoided sounding too conservative, making it difficult to spot clear policy differences between the two.
With this approach, both followed in the footsteps of long-serving and highly popular Green premier Winfried Kretschmann, a pragmatist famed for putting his state’s interests over party politics, who is stepping down.
Özdemir sought to distance himself from the federal Green party during the campaign, for example by speaking out against heavy EU fines for carmakers who miss the bloc’s emission limits, and even questioning a strict 2035 combustion engine phaseout. Voters considered the 60-year-old Özdemir more likeable, competent, and credible than the CDU’s 37-year-old Hagel. Just days before the vote, footage of a school visit, in which Hagel fumbled an explanation of the greenhouse gas effect and traded barbs with a teacher, went viral.
Asked what lessons the federal Green party could learn from his success, Özdemir told public broadcaster Phoenix that “it’s not true that people no longer want climate action or biodiversity, but rather the way we do it is perhaps the issue […] If you unite climate action and the economy, you can find a lot of support.”
“Especially businesspeople are often our allies because many of them have started to earn good money with saving energy, energy efficiency, and using fewer resources. So let’s promote the issue together,” he added.
While the Greens emphasised the economic opportunities linked to the transformation to climate neutrality in the campaign, the conservatives warned against “overburdening the economy with climate targets.”