More and more people are worried about constantly rising prices. Stability Germany has meanwhile become expensive Germany. This was correspondingly important for the voting decision in NRW. But Olaf Scholz overlooks this development. The Chancellor now has a fundamental problem of acceptance among the people.
It’s a big election defeat for Olaf Scholz – and there are reasons for that. Infratest determined for ARD which topics played the most important role for people in their voting decision. First place: the price increases. Stability Germany has now become expensive Germany and more and more people are worried that they simply can no longer pay for their usual life.
The federal government decided on aid measures just last week, including tax cuts and energy aid. Many people will see that as a drop in the bucket with inflation in excess of 7 percent.
For them, their lifestyle is tangibly threatened, and this feeling is reaching the middle classes in particular, on which Germany’s stability depends. And the message from Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck got stuck in Germany Mitte, according to which “we all” are getting poorer.
All information about the NRW election: EILT – state elections in NRW 2022 – first numbers: victory for Wüst and the CDU – debacle for the SPD and FDP – Greens cheer
Green politician Habeck was not only able to say this sentence because it is probably true (that’s just the way it is with currency devaluation – it affects the poorer more, but it doesn’t stop at the wealthy either). But because it affects the voters of the Greens the least. Because they usually live in prosperity – or value immaterial things more than the water level in their wallets.
Second place: climate. That also pays off for the Greens, because it is the topic that this party has made its own for the longest and most consistently. And that is gaining new importance precisely because of the Ukraine war: today hardly anyone doubts the intention to make Germany independent of energy supplies from the country of the war aggressor and to focus primarily on renewable energies.
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Third and fourth place belong together thematically: it is people’s fears about energy security and the fear of war in Germany triggered by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the threat of nuclear war. The Greens cut a good figure and the SPD a bad figure on these two issues in particular. In this respect, too, the negative record of the Social Democrats in North Rhine-Westphalia is as consistent as the positive record of the Greens in the most populous federal state.
Turned politically towards Berlin, people’s thematic preferences mean: A large part of the population is existentially insecure, probably more so than at any time since the end of the Second World War. And therefore expects leadership. Which she doesn’t get from Olaf Scholz.
The fact that the Chancellor’s self-perception is in stark contrast to this finding only reinforces the negative effect on the Social Democrats. What sociologists call “cognitive dissonance” has arisen between the Chancellor and the people. The population perceives reality differently than the Chancellor and also speaks a different language.
The Chancellor now has a fundamental problem of acceptance among the people. And the fact that leading Social Democrats now seriously believe that, after having achieved the worst result in their post-war history, they could also replace a successful Prime Minister from the CDU, who was also the clear winner of the elections, shows that the SPD apparently has its has lost orientation.
The Social Democrats are completely screwed.
