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Bovenschulte bonus for the SPD?
All data on the election in Bremen
05/14/2023 10:38 am
Big election day in the north: In Germany’s smallest federal state, the political balance of power in the state parliament is at stake. Will the SPD succeed this time in passing the CDU in the Bremen Parliament? The current figures at a glance.
An exciting vote is emerging in the state elections in Bremen: The Social Democrats, who have governed the two-city state of Bremen and Bremerhaven for 77 years, were just ahead in the last polls before the election, but still have to fear for the election victory. Around 460,000 eligible voters are called on May 14 to redefine the majority in the state parliament of Germany’s smallest federal state. The polling stations opened at 8 a.m.
Bremen has so far been led by a coalition of SPD, Greens and Left. The major opinion research institutes recently saw the SPD at 28 to 30 percent, just ahead of the CDU, which was at 27 to 28 percent. This means that the Social Democrats have good prospects not only of being in government again after 2019, but also of regaining the role as the strongest force in Bremen’s parliament.
Note: The infographics on elections initially show data from the last polls on election day and will be continuously updated as the first forecasts arrive after the polling stations have closed.
In the run-up to the election, SPD top candidate Andreas Bovenschulte – acting mayor of Bremen – said he was confident that he would be able to remain in office. The bonus in office and Bovenschulte’s personal popularity could be the decisive factor: The 57-year-old has governed in a coalition with the Greens and the Left Party since 2019. In the previous general election, the CDU replaced the SPD as the strongest party for the first time in the post-war period. However, the Christian Democrats were unable to take over the government because the Greens decided against a Jamaica coalition with the CDU and FDP.
Four years later, the Christian Democrats, with their top candidate Frank Imhoff, made a new attempt to win Bremen City Hall. The polls so far do not point to a historic change of government. The coalition options are still confusing, also because the consequences of the AfD quarrels are not yet foreseeable. The national association of the alternative had fallen out before the election. Competing lists of candidates meant that the AfD failed to gain admission to the elections. In 2019, the AfD in Bremen still had 6.1 percent of the votes.
According to pollsters, the Greens have to be prepared for a significant loss of votes in Bremen. In the polls, the party recently dropped to 12 to 13 percent. The left – so far also involved in the government as a coalition partner alongside the Greens in Bremen – can hope for eight to nine percent, depending on the survey. This could be enough for a continuation of the red-green-red three-way alliance.
The FDP should therefore end up with a stable six percent behind the new right-wing populist voters’ association BIW. The “Bürger in Wut” (BIW) was able to increase its poll numbers by three percentage points to up to nine percent compared to mid-April. The “angry citizens” hope to benefit from the failure of the AfD and move into the Bremen parliament for the first time with the strength of a faction. A total of 16 parties and groups of voters are on the ballot papers.
The BIW originated in Bremerhaven. Although they were recently below five percent, the party has been represented in the Bremen Parliament for several legislative periods, because due to a special feature of Bremen’s electoral law, it is enough to win five percent in just one of the two electoral areas of the city-state of Bremen and Bremerhaven.
In the election campaign, the Bremen voters primarily focused on school and education policy issues. Almost every second person named this in advance as the greatest challenge. Although the SPD has always provided the senator for education since the founding of the Federal Republic and the CDU made education a priority, the Christian Democrats were not able to benefit decisively, at least until shortly before the election.
The satisfaction with the work of the Bremen state government determined in surveys is currently greater than before the 2019 election. Incumbent Bovenschulte also enjoys significantly higher approval ratings than his challenger Imhoff, who is President of the Bremen Parliament. Bovenschulte’s bonus as an incumbent could be the decisive factor in ensuring that the longest government phase of a party in a federal state continues.
Accordingly, the SPD is positioning its tall candidate for mayor on several special posters, in which the head of “Bovi” – his nickname – protrudes over the poster surface. In the election campaign, Bovenschulte is campaigning for “a strong economy with good jobs and fair wages”, for more gender equality and security.
The Bremen SPD top candidate Bovenschulte has ruled largely silently so far. Nationwide, he recently campaigned for basic child security and a tax on excessive corporate profits in times of war and crisis. He also asked the federal government for more money for refugee accommodation.
CDU challenger Imhoff wants to do better than four years ago and not only lead his party to election victory in Bremen, but also to government responsibility. Unlike the top candidate and political career changer from 2019, Carsten Meyer-Heder, Imhoff as president of the citizenship is definitely a political heavyweight. The 54-year-old has been a member of the state parliament for 24 years and has been its president since 2019.
With 27-year-old Wiebke Winter, who is a member of the CDU federal executive board and state chairwoman of the Junge Union, the Bremen CDU Imhoff also provided a young co-top candidate. Winter, who is running for second place on the CDU state list, and Imhoff complete many campaign dates together.
The parties in Bremen are following a certain logic by aligning their election campaign strategies with educational issues and also with younger groups of voters: Bremen has repeatedly ended up far behind in nationwide educational studies. Among other things, the introduction of a compulsory pre-school year for children with language deficits is being discussed in Bremen.
Bremen is also one of only six federal states in which 16-year-olds are allowed to vote in state elections. The members of the state parliament, which normally has 87 seats, are elected for four years. So far, 72 MPs have come from the constituency of Bremen, and the remaining 15 from Bremerhaven.
In the future, the Bremen Parliament will increase by three more seats. The ratio of deputies is adjusted to the population of the two cities. Both electoral areas receive their own ballot papers with different candidate names of the participating parties.
Voters can put a maximum of five crosses on the ballot paper, either distributed among the parties (list vote) or on specific candidates (person votes). Bremen’s electoral law gives voters the opportunity to influence the composition of the citizenship – sometimes past party-internal lists.
The sizes of the parliamentary groups result from the sum of the votes cast for each party (regardless of whether they are list votes or personal votes). The exact distribution of seats follows the ratio of list and candidate mandates won per party.
In order to be able to enter the state parliament, a party must have received more than five percent of the votes in at least one of the two electoral areas (Bremen or Bremerhaven). The five percent hurdle does not apply nationwide, but is calculated separately in both electoral areas.