At no time did a majority of the population trust Laschet with the chancellery, said Nico Siegel from the survey institute Infratest dimap on Monday in Berlin. SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz was able to convince more strongly. This was the case “far into the bourgeois camp, right into the FDP electorate”.
The CDU / CSU was “shown a red card” in the run-up to the election on Sunday, “as we could not have imagined at the beginning of the year”. Siegel spoke of “considerable competence problems in the Union associated with a candidate who ultimately did not make it possible to win the election”. The election researcher added: “It will be interesting to see whether and to what extent the Union’s candidate for chancellor will maintain the right to chancellorship based on these personal values.”
Video: Laschet wants to form a Union-led government
The Union had achieved its historically worst result in the federal election with 24.1 percent of the vote. The CDU / CSU were thus behind the SPD with 25.7 percent. Forsa researcher Peter Matuschek said that the historically poor election result of the Union could “have consequences for the party system in Germany as we knew it”. The “relative strength of the SPD” was at the same time “a reflection of the relative weakness of the Union”. In the SPD, the “candidate status came into effect”.
Matthias Jung from the Elections Research Group pointed out that “a very large part of the electorate as a whole as well as of the CDU / CSU supporters had favored another candidate”. Looking at CSU boss Markus Söder, Jung said that this candidate was “also up for debate”. With him, the Union would have “achieved a significantly better result”.
