Germany's Scholz holds momentum with emphatic state election win
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The victory allows Mr Olaf Scholz to claim a strengthened hand in tackling the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BERLIN (BLOOMBERG) - Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats triumphed in Germany's first regional election since he took office, winning control of the small western state of Saarland for the first time in 23 years.
The SPD took 43.5 per cent in Sunday's (March 27) vote, a gain of almost 14 percentage points that lets it govern the state alone. The Christian Democratic Union once led by Angela Merkel slumped to 28.5 per cent, half a year after its defeat in a national election.
The victory allows Scholz, who took office in December, to claim a strengthened hand in tackling the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He's facing an inflation rate of 5.5 per cent, sliding business confidence and an economy that may have tipped into recession even before the war in Ukraine. His approval rating has risen since the Russian invasion, which prompted historic shifts by his government on energy policy and defence spending.
The CDU lost 12.2 percentage points compared with the last Saarland election five years ago. The result is another setback for the CDU after the federal election in September, which brought the Social Democrats to power after 16 years of conservative government under Merkel.
The nationalist Alternative for Germany party took 5.7 per cent, winning seats in the state legislature along with the the SPD and the CDU, according to preliminary official results. The Greens were hovering around 5 per cent, the pro-business Free Democrats took 4.8 per cent and the anti-capitalist Left party, 2.6 per cent.
The Saarland vote also marks a defeat for the CDU's new leader, Friedrich Merz, and state premier Tobias Hans, who failed to step out of the shadow of his predecessor.
Hans took over in 2018 from Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a former close ally of Merkel who was to become CDU leader that year but resigned after the party didn't pick her as candidate for chancellor in the race won by Scholz. She left politics along with Merkel after the CDU's national defeat last year.
