At the federal conference of the CDU party, its leader Friedrich Merz announced, in the context of the AfD's high results in the polls in the eastern German states: “The CDU has the strength, determination and importance in the East to oppose these people and allow stable governments.”
But if you ask the delegates for recipes on how to achieve this after the next state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, you discover great helplessness.
Waiting for the Haseloff effect
The usual response is: “First we have to be as strong as possible, everything else will be found.” Then there is the reference to the so-called “Haseloff effect”: Saxony-Anhalt CDU Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff was able to win. An election will be decided in 2021 in which the AfD performed significantly worse than expected.
Haseloff's Economy Minister Sven Schulze describes the effect of bearing his boss's name this way: “If you want to win the elections in the East, now you not only need a strong party, but also good minds. And we, as the CDU, have good minds in the eastern states of Germany.”
Shudder at possible Thuringian conditions
Schulze also told FOCUS online: “It must never happen that the AfD has a chance.” From the mouth of CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann, he sounded like this at the party conference: “Such people are not allowed to take responsibility for even a second.” Germany. Not for a second. But it will be difficult to keep them out, very difficult.
Elmar Brok, a former long-time MEP, is horrified to think about the results that the new alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), the left and the AfD could achieve together in Thuringia.
“The anti-Europe and pro-Russia parties could exceed 50 percent,” he shudders. “I do not know what to do”. One thing must be clear for the CDU: “Do not form a government with these parties.”
Minority governments or “coalitions with the rest of the world”
Most delegates simply shrug their shoulders when they hear the word BSW. One makes a gesture of contempt and says: “What are you doing? They are left-wing nationalists. Out with socialism and foreigners: we've had that before.”
All numbers games based on current polls for this year's state elections in the East always lead CDU strategists to two outcomes: minority governments or “coalitions with the rest of the world”.
They recommend “digital counterweight” to AfD
At the same time, thinking about counterstrategies is intensifying. MEP Stefan Berger observed: “Young people perceive the AfD strongly. On the one hand, this is due to its appearance on social networks such as Tiktok. On the other hand, it addresses safety issues in the environment of these young people, for example at school.”
This is what the delegate of the North Rhine-Westphalia party conference says: we must form a digital counterweight to the AfD and pay more attention to security issues.”
Surprising observation: “The majority of AfD voters do not even know their program”
Peter Liese, Berger's colleague in NRW, also bets that the following consideration will influence the polls: “I vote for the CDU so that the AfD does not take first place.”
Berlin delegate Hildegard Bentele, also a member of the European Parliament, recommends that the party leadership become even more personally involved in the electoral campaign in the East.
There's a lot of persuading there. Delegate Holger Bormann, deputy mayor of Wolfenbüttel, complains: “What worries me is that many people in the East feel abandoned.”
To his surprise, he says on his own walk, in the former peripheral zone: “The majority of AfD voters don't even know their program.”
The oldest delegate believes in the “sharp sword of democracy”
The oldest delegate at the party conference, 91-year-old Otto Wulff, was born shortly before the Nazis came to power in 1933. The honorary president of the Seniors' Union predicts the AfD: “The more visible it is, the greater his failure.”
And he has another prediction: “This democracy has a sharp sword and it will use it.”