SPD Secretary‑General Tim Klüssendorf said that his party’s poor showing in the Baden‑Württemberg state election does not warrant any changes at the federal level. “We have a fixed timetable” he explained to the Phoenix TV channel. “We have major reforms planned for this year that we must implement regardless of the election outcome. No one is going to influence us positively or negatively with their results – that is our duty”.
Klüssendorf emphasised that the first step is to analyse the election outcome itself. “About 60 percent of SPD voters say they feel the party is more concerned with the unemployed than with the working middle class” he noted, adding that the nation’s basic income-referred to as the Bürgergeld-was only adjusted last week.
When it comes to voters of the Union, Klüssendorf observed that they cast even higher scores for the Union. “Eighty percent of Union voters believe the federal government is not doing a good job” he said. “Yet, even with those five‑point losses, the Union still ends up with 30 percent”. He cautioned that these figures cannot be taken at face value, noting that drawing simple conclusions from such numbers is not straightforward.
