The deserted hamlet of Lützerath could – if you believe the many reports in the media – become the turning point of the German Green movement. There is talk of an “ordeal for the Greens” or of the fact that the “identity of the Greens will be decided here” or “what and who the Greens are”.
But a sober look at the development of the Green Party’s anchoring in the electorate gives little reason for such assumptions. The Green voter core, which has remained stable to this day, formed quickly after the party was founded in 1980 at state expense. Previously, the list had stood as a candidate in the 1979 European elections, and although it did not win any mandates, it did collect around five million German marks in reimbursement of campaign costs.
In the federal elections of 1987, the Greens were then voted in by 6.9 percent of all eligible voters in the West German affluent society of the time – initially by the sons, who revolted against their well-fed bourgeoisie fathers, but then increasingly also by the bourgeois daughters.
The votes of these core voters who joined the Greens at a young age were certain for the Green Party in all previous Bundestag elections: In the elections from 2002 to 2017, the proportion of eligible voters who voted for the Greens fluctuated only between 6 (2013) and 7, 5 percent (2009).
The community of values of the “Alt-Greens” only increased after the 2017 federal election
This community of values of the “Alt-Greens”, which is aging but loyal to the Green movement, only grew after the 2017 federal election. After the difficult government formation in 2017/18, the permanent conflicts between the parties of the grand coalition and the dispute between the sister parties CDU and CSU, trust in the formerly “big” parties fell drastically.
Confidence in the CDU and the SPD with their two party leaders fell completely: in the summer of 2019, only 17 percent considered Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Andrea Nahles only 12 percent to be suitable for chancellor. Those dissatisfied with the CDU and SPD did not vote at all in the 2019 European elections or migrated to the Greens, who with 7,677,071 votes (that was 12.5 percent of all eligible voters) achieved their best election result to date, which they had in the 2021 federal election and the state elections in 2022 but not achieved again.
“New Greens” no secure regular voters
In the general election, the number of votes for the Greens fell by 824,865 to 6,852,206 – a 10.7 percent drop in votes. The drop in votes in last year’s state elections compared to the 2019 European elections was even greater: the number of green voters in Schleswig-Holstein fell by 36.4 percent, in North Rhine-Westphalia by 29 percent and in Lower Saxony by 37 percent.
This loss of votes shows that the “New Greens” who migrated to the Greens because of dissatisfaction with other parties, in contrast to the “Old Greens”, have not become regular voters for the Greens. In addition, for the “New Greens” apart from dissatisfaction with the personal offer of the CDU and the SPD, no issue – not even climate protection – was decisive for the choice of the Greens.
Ambiguity of the Greens
The decision in favor of the Greens was only made easier by the pragmatic, rational political style embodied by the party’s leadership duo – Baerbock and Habeck. The current debates about Lützerath and the use of lignite should therefore be just as irrelevant as the conflict between the climate protesters (for whose actions only 17 percent of all German citizens and only 15 percent of 14- to 29-year-olds have understanding) and the Green members of the government have an influence on the future election decision of the “New Greens”.
And the “old-green” community of values has always faithfully voted for the Greens – regardless of any issues, the Green personnel offer or political about-faces by the Greens in governments – such as the current swing in the Ukraine crisis from a peace party to a war party.
The Austrian sociologist Leopold Rosenmayr recognized this ambiguity of the “old Greens” very early on when he formulated: “The secret of the Greens is that they have created a language system that allows them to seamlessly combine criticism of society with the use of their privileges.” That is why the Greens will survive Lützerath without much damage.
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