“What is green and has no voters?”

Concerns over global warming are more and more pressing, yet the German party that addresses them most consistently struggle to maintain a solid voter base, Matthias Geis writes in weekly newspaper Die Zeit. Not only did the Green Party fail to enter the Saarland state parliament in recent elections, it is also polling very modestly in the far bigger state of North Rhine-Westphalia - where elections will take place in May - as well as at the federal level. The Greens were reluctantly on track to consider a coalition with the conservative CDU/CSU following the federal election in September, Geis writes. But since the Social Democrats adopted Martin Schulz as candidate for chancellor and their polling improved, the Green's situation has suffered, he explains. They must now decide which party they would prefer as a partner to make a plausible case for how to implement "their far-reaching ideas for change,” Geis says.

See the CLEW factsheet The Green Party’s draft election programme – a first look and the CLEW dossier Vote2017 – German elections and the Energiewende for background.