State elections in Bavaria: Keep it up – but how and with whom?

Rarely has a Bavarian state election been so boring and so exciting at the same time. Boring because – if the Alps don’t collapse first – it is clear that the old Prime Minister will also be the new one. And that Markus Söder and the CSU will most likely continue to govern with the Free Voters as coalition partners.

After the leaflet affair: Free voters under Hubert Aiwanger are flying high

But the choice will be exciting for many other reasons. For Söder personally, October 8th is the ultimate test. Will he still manage to achieve the historically poor CSU result of 2018, when the party fell by more than ten points to just 37.2 percent? Or will the CSU’s decline continue, as the latest survey results at least suggest?

Very close

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Second: How strong will the Free Voters really be in the end? The leaflet affair involving its chairman Hubert Aiwanger has recently given the party further notoriety. In surveys, Aiwanger & Co. have since experienced an unprecedented rise, with up to 17 percent, around five points above their 2018 result. The closer election day gets, the more there are signs that the solidarity effect with Aiwanger is ebbing. Thanks to the rise, he and many Free Voters even see themselves with one foot in the Bundestag and hope for success in the 2025 federal election.

Uncertain future of the Bavarian traffic lights

Third: What will become of the “Bavarian traffic light”? Will the Greens, SPD and FDP, as Berlin’s mid-term review, receive the receipt of many voters in Bavaria who are particularly dissatisfied with the work of the federal government? Will the FDP with state leader Martin Hagen even miss the five percent hurdle, as the polls unanimously predict? And will the SPD headed by state leader Florian von Brunn experience another historic bankruptcy after 2018?

After coming second in 2018, will the Greens and their ambitious top candidates Katharina Schulze and Ludwig Hartmann have to rank further back this time? Many people in Bavaria, not just the Greens, already see Schulze in particular as having an important role in the 2028 state elections. Then, by far the best-known state parliament Greens, given their age, could challenge Söder directly for the first time, as they will also formally become Prime Minister if they win the election could. Previously, this was prevented by the age limit for prime ministers enshrined in the constitution.

AfD thinks it has a chance of third place in Bavaria

And fourth: How is the AfD doing this time? The fact is that the right-wing populists who are being monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Bavaria are far removed from the poll figures in other countries. Nevertheless, the demoscopes give them a chance of becoming the second or at least third strongest force in the Free State and thus possibly the largest opposition party – with possibly significant consequences for their status in parliament, for example when it comes to the distribution of committee chairs or positions of state parliament vice-presidents.

Söder appears demonstratively calm on the outside, speaks of humility in front of the election and voters and believes that things usually turn out differently than the surveys predict. He calls Aiwanger’s soaring a “fever curve.” However, he and the Christian Socialists are still extremely nervous. Who would have thought that after more than five years in power, Söder would have to be so worried about not falling further?

Markus Söder enjoys support in the CSU – for now

The party base demonstrated almost maximum support at the party conference last Saturday and sent Söder into the election campaign finish line with a re-election result of 96.6 percent. But the solidarity within the party could quickly be forgotten if the election results were weak. Ultimately, in this case, Söder would not have adequately demonstrated that he can win elections convincingly, even after more than five years in office.

This could be the death knell for Söder’s federal political ambitions, which he himself regularly rejected – at least if the CDU does not also ruin its elections by the time the Union Chancellor candidate is chosen in autumn 2024.

As a reminder: The CSU used to regularly win absolute majorities, and with Edmund Stoiber at the helm it even achieved a two-thirds majority 20 years ago. The 40 percent mark is now almost out of reach. Can Söder continue to convey to his followers that this is primarily due to external influences? And how would they forgive Söder if he had to hand over another ministry to the Free Voters during the coalition negotiations?

Courting for the right

In fact, the CSU has long since found itself in a new era: it is not only the AfD that has established itself on its right. The Free Voters are also attracting more and more voters from the right-wing conservative spectrum. Hubert Aiwanger’s use of language and choice of topics, sometimes based on the AfD, is viewed as a coincidence by only a few political experts. “The Free Voters have a lot of support from the CSU’s former electorate, they are farmers for whom the CSU is too Europe-friendly, who think the CSU has dominated for too long. The CSU is too aloof for them,” said political scientist Ursula Münch at the time”.

And there isn’t much room to the left either: the Greens and the FDP are now fighting over a middle-class, higher-earning voter base. The CSU no longer reaches the big city milieu, which is occupied by the Greens, said Münch. Settlement takes place on Sunday – then there are no more excuses.