Narrow majority in favor of remaining in coalition in FDP member survey
Published: Monday, Jan 1st 2024, 15:10
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The FDP leadership can breathe a sigh of relief: a majority of members have voted to remain in the coalition with the SPD and the Greens. 52.24 percent of those who voted were in favor of continuing the government work, 47.76 percent wanted to end the coalition, as the German Press Agency learned from party circles on Monday. However, only 26,058 of the approximately 72,100 FDP members took part in the survey - just over one in three.
The members' vote has no practical consequences. This is because the statutes state: "The bodies of the party are not bound by the result of the member survey in their decision-making." However, the result is an important indicator of the mood. If there had been a majority in favor of leaving the traffic light, this would have fueled the discussion within the party and put pressure on the party leadership.
This would very likely have meant new turbulence for the traffic light coalition. The relatively low interest of the FDP base in the question posed - a participation rate in the survey of around 36% - and the result now also strengthen party leader Christian Lindner.
The FDP Federal Executive Committee launched the survey on December 18 after 598 members requested it. Members were able to participate online for two weeks. The question was: "Should the FDP end the coalition with the SPD and Greens as part of the federal government?" The answer could be "yes" or "no".
According to the FDP statutes, a poll must be held if 500 members request it. This can be done by secret postal vote, a decentralized face-to-face vote, an online vote or a combination of the three procedures. In this case, the party leadership opted for the online procedure. Only members with an e-mail address listed in the membership directory were able to take part.
The initiative for the members' vote followed an open letter from 26 state and local FDP politicians. Following the poor election results in Hesse and Bavaria, they had called for the FDP to reconsider its coalition partners. In Bavaria, the FDP missed out on entering the state parliament last October. In Hesse, it only just made it over the five percent hurdle.
Since joining the traffic light coalition, the FDP had previously failed in five other state elections. In elections in Berlin, Lower Saxony and Saarland, it also failed to reach the five percent hurdle. In Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, it remained in parliament but was kicked out of the government. Participation in the traffic light coalition in the federal government was controversial in parts of the party from the outset.
The election year 2024 also promises to be difficult for the FDP. The polls for the three state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg in September put the Liberals at between three and five percent. However, they are already several weeks old. In Saxony and Brandenburg, the FDP is already not in the state parliament. There are no national polls yet for the European elections in June - in 2019, the FDP did not exactly achieve a heady 5.4%.
FDP leader Lindner was emphatically relaxed about the members' vote. It does not stress him out, he said. "Because it is an opportunity to make it clear that the FDP is helping to shape the direction of the government."
©Keystone/SDA
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