One of the three traffic light parties increases, two can consider themselves winners - and the third threatens to be expelled from the Lower Saxony state parliament. Election winner Stephan Weil is aiming for a red-green state government.
After the state elections, the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil, held out the prospect of a return to a red-green coalition in his state. "If there is a basis for this, then what I said before the election also applies after the election," said the SPD's top candidate on ARD. But Weil also emphasized that he wanted to wait for the preliminary official final result.
Greens' top candidate Julia Hamburg is also backing red-green: "We will do everything we can as Greens to shape Lower Saxony for the next five years and make it fit for the future." The elections have shown "that the people have opted for red-green in Lower Saxony".
Weil's previous coalition partner, the CDU, had its worst election result in decades. Country chief Bernd Althusmann announced on Sunday evening that he would resign from office.
The FDP is threatened with expulsion from the state parliament. ARD and ZDF saw the liberals in projections around 8 p.m. at 4.9 percent. Should this be confirmed, the FDP would no longer be represented in the state parliaments in four federal states; in Hamburg it also has no parliamentary status.
The AfD has almost doubled its share of the vote. "Everything that is over ten percent in the West is a people's party, that's us," said AfD federal leader Tino Chrupalla. "We are back."
The election campaign was marked by the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The focus was on the energy crisis and the concerns of many citizens about the high prices for gas, electricity and food. National political issues played a secondary role.
The 63-year-old Weil, who has been prime minister for almost ten years, is now aiming for his third term. "The voters gave the SPD the government mandate and no one else," he said in the evening. CDU top candidate Althusmann also acknowledged this: "We humbly accept this vote." The SPD has a clear government mandate.
FDP leader Christian Lindner also attributed his party's disappointing election result to the federal coalition with the SPD and the Greens. "Because many of our supporters are strangers to this coalition," said the Federal Minister of Finance. "We are in the traffic light coalition because of our state-political responsibility, not because the SPD and the Greens are so close to our beliefs."
A failure of the FDP at the five percent hurdle would be detrimental to the coalition peace in Berlin and could further exacerbate the dispute between the Liberals and the Greens - especially with a view to a possible escalation of the energy crisis in winter, possible further relief measures, the dispute over nuclear power and the debt brake .
FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai gave a foretaste of this in the "Berliner Runde" on ARD: "The role and voice of the FDP in this coalition must be even more recognizable in the future than it has been so far," he said. The traffic light coalition must talk, dealing with each other does not go on like this. "A coalition will not work if two partners are constantly coming up with ideas on how to spend even more money and even more money and others have to constantly deal with the question of how to organize and finance the whole thing." The FDP still has "big problems with this coalition".
Djir-Sarai called on the coalition partners to now decide to extend the lifetime of the nuclear power plants. No country in Europe understands why Germany is refraining from extending the term. "The three available nuclear power plants must run until at least 2024," said the FDP general secretary. Should there be problems with the energy supply in winter, this would otherwise be associated with the face of Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck.
