MIESBACH, Germany— Angela Merkel has a simple message for voters this campaign season: “Germany is doing well.” Here in Bavaria, Governor Horst Seehofer includes an addendum: “Bavaria is doing better.”
Reuters
A Bavarian brass band plays ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s arrival at a campaign rally in Miesbach, where she spoke to an overflow crowd.
Beset by scandal and struggling to cope with changing social mores, the dominant political party in this wealthy and idiosyncratic state in southern Germany has been striving to keep its swagger. It appears to be succeeding.
The conservative Christian Social Union, a Bavaria-only party that is allied with Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union on the national stage, has governed the state continuously since 1957—and is polling near 50% ahead of state elections on Sunday.
The vote will be closely watched for clues about what Germans will do in national elections on Sept. 22. Some polls suggest the CSU will win an absolute majority in the state Parliament in Munich, an outcome that would bode well for Ms. Merkel as she seeks a third term in Berlin.
The CSU’s strong position comes despite a string of corruption and nepotism scandals in recent years and flip-flopping on bread-and-butter conservative issues.
In other parts of the country, Bavaria is often jokingly compared with another state with decadeslong one-party rule: North Korea. Yet at a time of uncertainty over the future of the euro and the European Union, the CSU’s promise to protect Bavaria’s rural traditions and economic prosperity is resonating.
Associated Press
Governor of Bavaria and top candidate of the Christian Social Union Horst Seehofer speaks in Munich Thursday at the party’s final rally for the Bavarian state elections. Critics have accused him of using xenophobia to boost his party’s fortunes.
WSJ
“It used to be people didn’t go to the polls because they didn’t know who to vote for,” said Luise Bachmaier, 70, a lifelong CSU voter. “Now they know.”
During the campaign, the CSU has pushed red-meat, conservative politics in a way that is rarely seen on the national level, which is dominated by the painstakingly centrist style of Ms. Merkel.
“We will remain a country rooted in Christian values,” Mr. Seehofer said to hundreds of supporters at the old Olympic complex in Munich on Thursday night. “With us there will be no Islamic public holidays!”
Mr. Seehofer’s most startling gambit in recent weeks was to call for a foreigners-only toll on German highways. He said that Ms. Merkel’s CDU would need to support the measure if it wanted to renew its coalition agreement with the CSU.
The toll is necessary, Mr. Seehofer says, because Bavaria’s roads are in sore need of repair and foreign motorists aren’t paying their share.
Ms. Merkel has noted that such a toll could be considered discriminatory under European Union law, but has promised to work with Mr. Seehofer to find a compromise—a sign of how powerful his party remains.
Opponents on the left and the right don’t quite know what to make of the CSU’s continued success. Mr. Seehofer, 64, has run Bavaria since 2008 and is one of the most popular politicians in Germany.
“There won’t be real democracy here until the CSU doesn’t determine every vote,” said Ursula Lex, the local head of the business-friendly Free Democrats, or FDP, in the town of Miesbach.
The FDP, currently the minority governing partner in Bavaria alongside the CSU, and alongside the CSU and CDU in Berlin, faces a crucial test in the Bavarian election. Polls both nationwide and in Bavaria show that the FDP could miss the 5% threshold needed for seats in Parliament.
If the party fails that test in Bavaria, the CSU will have an easy path to regaining full control of the state government. If the FDP posts a similarly disappointing result in national elections a week later, Ms. Merkel will have to negotiate with the left-of-center Social Democrats or Greens to form a governing coalition.
Social Democrat Angelika Graf, a member of the national parliament representing a district south of Munich, says she sees a xenophobic undercurrent in Mr. Seehofer’s sudden support for a foreigners-only toll. But it is a shrewd pre-election tactic, she said, because it lets him show he cares more about Bavarian well-being than European law.
“It signals he doesn’t care at all what the EU requires,” Ms. Graf said. The message he is sending, she added, is that “he wants to get this done for Bavaria.”
Bavaria is home to global companies such as BMW AG and Siemens AG, a thriving tourism industry and an untold number of medium-size manufacturers like the business owned by Ms. Lex, which makes precision parts for planes and spaceships.
Bavaria’s economic output per person of nearly $50,000 is 63% more than that of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Ms. Merkel’s home state in the former East Germany.
Many in this state of 12 million people also fiercely guard their Alpine and Catholic traditions, which color every CSU event.
In the town square in Miesbach on Wednesday, Ms. Merkel spoke alongside Mr. Seehofer to an overflow crowd that included the local mountain riflemen’s regiment dressed in Bavarian garb, the white rooster feathers in their hats waving in the breeze.
In her speech, Ms. Merkel needled the Greens for supporting a weekly vegetarian-only day at public canteens and underscored her roots as a pastor’s daughter by noting that in her childhood, her family didn’t eat meat on Fridays.
The CSU only runs in Bavaria but also sends representatives to the national parliament in Berlin, where it typically allies with the CDU.
Because of the CSU’s strength, Mr. Seehofer has managed to assert some of its politics on a national level, for example a new law that provides for a monthly payment to some stay-at-home mothers.
That level of influence seemed in question earlier this year when some top CSU officials resigned after pervasive nepotism in the party’s ranks came to light. But Bavarian voters appear to be cutting their party plenty of slack.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” said a longtime CSU supporter, Marta Wudy, 60, a retired secretary. “Does your company throw you out right away? No. You have to be able to forgive, too.”
Mr. Seehofer made no mention of the scandal in his speech at the major pre-election event in Munich on Thursday night. Instead, he made fun of other German states for having hyphens in their names and exalted Bavaria’s economic prowess, which has earned it the envy of poorer peers.
“You have to earn jealousy,” he said. “Pity comes for free.”
Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared September 13, 2013, on page A8 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: State Vote to Test Merkel’s Strength.