2023-05-14 20:14:36
According to a first official extrapolation, the SPD won the general election in Bremen with 29.2 percent. The second strongest force was the CDU with 25.6 percent, as the state election authority announced on Sunday after the counting results by 9:30 p.m. The Greens can therefore count on 12 percent of the votes, the left on 12.1 percent. So far, 9.3 percent have been determined for the angry citizens and 5.2 percent for the FDP.
The count will continue until a representative sample is reached, said a spokeswoman for the election management. This is only expected after midnight. The provisional official final result should not be available until the middle of the week after the complicated counting has been completed.
Mayor Andreas Bovenschulte (SPD) could continue his previous red-green-red coalition. However, he announced that he also wanted to speak to the CDU. Bovenschulte spoke of a “terrific result” for his party, which has been the mayor for almost 80 years.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil said the victory would give “tailwind for us here in Berlin, too.” Regarding the coalition question, he said: “They don’t need any advice from the federal level.” Greens top candidate Maike Schaefer spoke of a bitter result and said she was not afraid to take responsibility herself. However, the government coalition wants to continue. Greens leader Omid Nouripour admitted that there was “certainly no tailwind” from the Greens in the federal government. It is a “day of humility”.
CDU top candidate Frank Imhoff said his party was ready for exploratory talks with the SPD. “Of course we want to be involved.” Left top candidate and Senator for Economic Affairs Kristina Vogt hopes for quick exploratory talks, as she said. FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai expressed his confidence that the FDP would return to parliament. “That was our main goal.”
The right-wing populist BiW benefited from the fact that the AfD was not allowed. For the first time, they are moving into parliament with faction strength. In Bremerhaven, according to the ARD forecast, they even got 21.5 percent in the early evening – compared to 8.5 percent in Bremen. The AfD got 6.1 percent of the votes in the 2019 election. The BiW locate themselves between the CDU and AfD. Top candidate Piet Leidreiter said that BiW had always done good Realpolitik and had its own conservative offer.
A provisional official final result is not expected until the middle of the week – the counting is lengthy due to the complicated Bremen electoral system. When voting, voters can tick up to five boxes. During the night, the state returning authority only publishes an official extrapolation, which experience has shown is already close to the final result.
SPD top candidate Bovenschulte has been mayor and president of the Senate for four years. The 57-year-old, who has a doctorate in law, was previously mayor of the neighboring municipality of Weyhe in Lower Saxony, but from 2010 to 2013 he was also chairman of the SPD in Bremen. The rock music fan, who is almost two meters tall and known as “Bovi”, is considered a party leftist. CDU leader Imhoff is a trained farmer and landscaper and is the fifth generation to run a farm in the Strom district. The 54-year-old has been a citizen since 1999.
In the smallest German federal state, the two-city state of Bremen and the smaller Bremerhaven, around 463,000 people were called to vote. The once rich Hanseatic city of Bremen, with its tradition of seafarers and merchants, has endured severe structural change and is now heavily indebted. According to the Federal Statistical Office, the proportion of recipients of citizen income, formerly known as Hartz IV, is the highest in a comparison of the federal states at 17.1 percent, and Bremen is also in last place in the ranking of the best education systems according to the INSM Education Monitor 2022.
According to the Bremen social department, the state has the highest proportion of people with a migration background among those eligible to vote at 17.8 percent – the national average is 11.5 percent. But the country is also a strong business location – with its ports, the world’s second largest Mercedes plant and aerospace companies.
In federal politics, the FDP in particular had looked spellbound to Bremen, because they had to cope with a real series of defeats in the federal states since the 2021 federal elections. This has greatly stimulated the mood in the Berlin traffic light coalition.
His party in Bremen now felt the quarrels about personnel policy and the heating law from German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens). On the left, the Bremen election should be seen as a welcome change from the ongoing crisis in the federal party.
Traditionally, Bremen is not a home game for the CDU – the federal government is therefore more concerned with the upcoming autumn elections in Bavaria and Hesse. Then almost a quarter of those eligible to vote in Germany will be called to vote.
1684096950
#SPD #wins #election #Bremen