Analysis of the Thuringian CDU: “Have disaffected with top candidates”

Analysis of the Thuringian CDU
“Cheated on top candidates”

For the CDU in Thuringia, the federal election is a disaster. For the first time, the party is only a third party in the Free State. For Landeschef Hirte the result of a chain of errors. Topics, timing, candidate – all wrong.

Too late, the wrong candidate, no Eastern issues: The Thuringian CDU leader Christian Hirte has sharply criticized his own party’s campaign for the federal election. “The CDU was voted out,” he said in front of around 150 delegates at a state party conference of the Thuringian CDU in Suhl. One can expect that there will be a new Chancellor Olaf Scholz before Christmas.

Shepherd made it clear that they were betting on the wrong candidate: “Our own Union family – and I do not exclude ourselves in Thuringia – has struggled with our top candidate,” said Hirte. He had warned early on that Armin Laschet could be proposed as a candidate who large parts of the party do not support, said Hirte.

The election campaign was also very difficult “because we were extremely late”. Everyone believed that there would be a polarizing election campaign “CDU against Greens”. But this did not happen.

Result of the CDU in Thuringia “disastrous”

The CDU election campaign also suffered from the issues, emphasized Hirte. This has become particularly clear in the eastern German federal states. It was not possible there to adequately address the special situation in the new federal states.

Hirte called the result of the CDU in Thuringia not only bad, but “disastrous”. The Christian Democrats had achieved 16.9 percent in the Bundestag election in Thuringia – their worst result in the Free State so far in a Bundestag election. The CDU landed in third place for the first time – behind AfD and SPD. The CDU in Thuringia had won the 2017 federal election. At that time, she also got all eight direct mandates in the constituencies. She had to give up seven of them after the election on September 26th.

Hirte had won a direct mandate in the Free State three times in a row. In the September election, he came in third behind AfD and SPD – but moved back into the Bundestag via the state list. He has been running the regional association for a year. Previously, he was the Federal Government’s Eastern Commissioner, but had to give up the post at the instigation of Chancellor Angela Merkel after he welcomed the election of FDP politician Thomas L. Kemmerich as Prime Minister of the Free State with the help of the AfD and the CDU in February 2020.

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