Germans in the coastal state of Lower Saxony went to the polls on Sunday in a closely watched regional election that is seen as a test for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats amid an acute energy crisis.
Polling stations close at 18:00 (1600 GMT), with the latest polls showing Scholz’s centre-left SPD slightly ahead of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party.
Fear of skyrocketing energy bills has dominated the race in the northwestern North Sea region, reflecting national sentiment.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed up energy costs, pushed German inflation to a record 10 percent in September and stoked fears of a looming recession in Europe’s leading economy.
Popular Lower Saxony Prime Minister Stephan Weil of the SPD, who is seeking a third term, said the election campaign was “the most difficult of my life”.
“I’ve never seen so many question marks and concerns on the faces of the citizens,” he told WirtschaftsWoche.
Weil, 63, has proven to be a safe partner in uncertain times and wants Lower Saxony – home of car giant Volkswagen as well as most of Germany’s wind turbines – to play a leading role in the green energy transition.
He has also welcomed a controversial €200 billion energy fund relaunched by Scholz to protect German consumers from price shocks.
Weil’s biggest rival, Minister of Economic Affairs Bernd Althusmann from the CDU, says the massive aid package lacks clarity.
He has accused the federal government of being too slow to act decisively as Germans prepare for a harsh winter.
The 55-year-old challenger saw Sunday’s vote as a verdict on Scholz’s coalition in Berlin made up of SPD, Greens and FDP.
“If the CDU becomes the strongest party in Lower Saxony, which is realistic, it will be a serious blow to the already divided federal government,” he told the Rheinische Post.
At 12:30 p.m., voter turnout was 24.6 percent, according to the Hanover state election office, five years ago it was almost 27 percent.
– nuclear power plant series –
In Lower Saxony, according to opinion polls, the SPD is at 31 to 33 percent, followed by the CDU at 27 to 28 percent.
A win would be a boost for Scholz’s SPD after losing the last two state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein to the CDU, where voters chastised his handling of the Ukraine crisis.
The Greens are tipped at 16 percent, which would be their best result ever out of 6.1 million voters.
The far-right AfD is around 11 percent in polls, almost twice as much as in 2017.
A strong performance by the AfD in Lower Saxony, which was torn apart by power struggles, “would be a protest election that few would have expected until a few months ago,” political scientist Ursula Münch told the AFP news agency.
The FDP is now hovering at five percent, the threshold required to enter the state parliament.
A major point of contention between the top candidates is the fate of Lower Saxony’s Emsland nuclear power plant – one of only three still in operation in Germany.
Althusmann has reacted angrily to Berlin’s decision to go ahead with Emsland’s planned shutdown this year, despite the need to diversify energy supplies as the country weans itself from Russian gas and oil.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck, of the traditionally anti-nuclear Green Party, recently announced that the other two plants will remain on standby until April 2023, marking a landmark about-face.
Weil has backed Berlin’s stance, saying the Emsland is not needed to secure Lower Saxony’s energy supply – although he acknowledged other regions could struggle in colder weather.
Although the SPD and CDU are currently in joint government in Lower Saxony, Weil rules out another coalition, preferring instead to work with the Greens next.
