Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, the sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, is headed for a disaster in the October 14 state elections. The CSU is sure to lose the majority it has held for much of the postwar period in the wealthy southern state. It will be lucky to even lead a coalition government.
While the writing has been on the wall for the conservative party for some time, the looming debacle is likely to have national repercussions. The CSU sits in the same group as the CDU in the national parliament, and also has three ministers in the current cabinet, including the controversial interior minister, Horst Seehofer.
Although a regional party, the CSU has been able to punch above its weight for decades thanks to its firm grip on power in Munich, the state capital. That is, until now.
In recent years, both the CDU and the CSU lost ground to the far-right Alternative for Germany, known by its German acronym AfD, due to the backlash against Ms. Merkel’s generous asylum policy.
This has forced the Bavarian party, always more conservative than the CDU, to parrot AfD rhetoric on immigrants while trying to hold on to more centrist voters. But this strategy is backfiring spectacularly. AfD support has risen to 20 percent in some districts while overall it is expected to win at least 12 percent of the state vote. This is in line with the 12.4 percent the anti-immigrant party got in Bavaria at the federal election a year ago.
But on the other hand, the CSU’s populist posturing to keep the AfD at bay has alienated moderates. Current polls put CSU support at just 33 percent, down from 38.8 percent at last year’s federal election — which was already a historic low. In Bavaria’s last state election in 2013, the CSU won a commanding 47.7 percent of votes and 56 percent of all seats in the state parliament.