Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Eurointelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Eurozone.

I'm joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

Guys, it's Germany's super election year, kicking off this weekend with state and regional elections.

Wolfgang, what can we expect on Sunday in Germany?

The big issue to watch out for is not necessarily whether the CDU is losing the election.

They will probably lose the elections.

Now, we're recording this on Friday.

So if you listen to this on Sunday at 8 o'clock and you know the outcome, you will have,

you will know than we do now.

But the polls are suggesting

this is not going to be a good day for the CDU they had hoped to capture the two states these are

traditional CDU states Ryan and Palatinate is the state of Helmut Kohl that was a classic CDU

run state until the 1990s and early 2000s and they had a good chance to recapture it.

But in Wittenberg, in the southwest of Germany, used to be a classic CDU state, but it's

become a green state. And the CDU is trailing the Greens by some 10 percentage points in the

polls. Now, what we need to look out for is whether the CDU is trailing the Greens by some 10 percentage points in the polls. Now, what we need to look out for is whether the CDU disappoints relative to what we expect

today.

Because it's all about sort of story building.

The CDU has gone in the opinion polls down from something like almost 40% a few months ago to about 30% nationwide.

That's terrible. And, you know, it's not what they had hoped to stay to be. We've had scandals.

There were a couple of CDU people who were selling, you know, basically when the country,

when the pandemic struck, they were basically getting

...