Daniel Krusic, the head of the SPD’s youth wing in Baden-Württemberg, is seeing very little hope for his party during the current campaign. “We’re all relieved if this is over by Sunday” he told the “taz”. “It’s depressing”. Even though the mood at the party’s information stands is not entirely bad-“people are talking to us, our candidates are well received” -the exhausting winter campaign and the sharp focus on the Greens and CDU have taken a large toll on the SPD.
The SPD now faces its worst result in Baden-Württemberg in the state elections. If the party polls between seven and nine percent, it will still fall well below the dramatic 11‑percent showing it achieved five years ago.
SPD’s top candidate Andreas Stoch explains that the media’s emphasis on a contest between the Greens and the CDU has effectively made positioning impossible. “I often hear people say they will vote for Özdemir to stop Hagel” he said. “You can’t even get into a substantive debate”.
This view is echoed in Berlin. “The public seems uninterested in what the SPD has in its program” said Derya Türk‑Nachbaur, the “taz”‘s correspondent. She is parliamentary chief of staff for the SPD’s Bundestag group and also deputy chair of the Baden‑Württemberg state delegation. Türk‑Nachbaur holds the media’s focus on the rivalry between Özdemir and Hagel partly responsible for the poor polling numbers, adding, “It’s no secret that we’re dissatisfied when you look at the figures”.
Stoch does not set a rigid target for the election results. “We definitely want a two‑digit vote share” he said. “I will fight until the last drop of blood to beat the eleven percent we got last time”.
