Die saarländische Landtagswahl vom 27. März 2022: Der Triumph von Anke Rehlingers SPD

Tue SPD fully lived up to its role as favorite and won the Saarland state election in March 2022 with an absolute majority of the seats in the state parliament. As has often been the case in recent state elections, the popularity of top candidates for the office of prime minis- ter played a decisive role. Here, deputy Prime Minister Anke Rehlinger, who has long been rooted in Saar politics, was clearly ahead of the incumbent Tobias Hans, who had been in office for four years. Tue Social Democrats won voters from both the CDU and the Left-Party. Tue CDU never came out of the defensive in the entire election campaign, and their attempt to use Prime Minister Hans’ incumbency bonus failed. Tue election campaign of the Greens, the Left, and the AfD was overshadowed by constant inner-party controversies with battles over direction and trench warfare around long-standing leading figures in the respective parties. In Saarland, the FDP has always only played a subordinate role in state elections since 1990. Consequently, only the AfD managed to enter the Saarland parliament alongside the SPD a