Power-Politics in the Governing Coalition: Do State Elections Matter?

In March, the Social Democrats were able to win by a wide margin in state elections in the Saarland, a small state on the border of France and Luxembourg. Earlier this month, voters in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein gave the Christian Democrats an election victory. The Greens also did well – but the Free Democrats and especially the Social Democrats lost ground. This weekend voters in Germany’s most populous state North-Rhine Westphalia will take to the polls. The situation in each state is different – but these elections serve as a referendum on the leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Ampelkoalition. The election results at the state level can serve as a stress test for the mood within the coalition – but can the results at the state level change the balance of power within the governing coalition?

Join us for a discussion about what the state elections mean for the governing coalition with journalist Paul-Anton Krüger, Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, on May 18 at 11 am ET.

Paul-Anton Krüger has been Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung since the 2021 federal election. Previously he reported on political affairs and served as Deputy Head of the Foreign Policy Department with a focus on the Middle East and international security for three years. Prior to that, he spent four years based in Cairo and served as a correspondent covering large parts of the Arab world and Iran.

After graduating from the Alte Landesschule in Korbach, he studied journalism in Berlin and Munich. In August 2005, he joined the Süddeutsche Zeitung as a volunteer, worked as an editor since 2008, and as head of the foreign policy department since 2011. In the fall of 2007, Mr. Krüger was a guest editor at the Chicago Tribune as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, the German-American journalism scholarship of the International Journalism Programs e.V.