Polling stations opened in the German region of Brandenburgsurrounding Berlin, where close regional elections are taking place in which the far right could take first place from the Chancellor’s Social Democrats Olaf Scholz. A total of 2.1 million citizens -100,000 of them for the first time- are called to the polls, which will remain open from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (between 6:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. GMT).
At the close, the results of the exit polls will be made public, although it will be necessary to wait until late at night, or even until Monday morning, to know the preliminary results of the recount, expected particularly tightThe electoral commission said that postal turnout would likely be higher than previous times, with 356,000 voters already applying, compared to 200,000 in the 2019 election.
Brandenburg was until now a fiefdom of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)in the regional government since German reunification in 1990, first alone, then in various coalitions, led in the last decade by the popular Dietmar Woidke.
However, the overwhelming advance of the extreme right Alternative for Germany (AfD)which won its first regional elections in Thuringia on September 1 and came second in Saxony, is also reflected in the polls in the last eastern state to vote this year. According to the latest poll published on Thursday by public broadcaster ZDF, the AfD could come first with 28 percent of the vote, just one point ahead of the SPD.
AfD, without real chances of governing
THE Christian Democrats would occupy third place with 14%, followed by Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW)a populist split from La Izquierda, with 13%. In the last election, in 2019, the SPD managed to defeat the AfD by a narrow margin of 26.2 points to 23.5, while the Christian Democrats and the Greens took third and fourth place with 15.6 and 10.8% of the vote respectively.
With the sanitary cordon in place for the moment, AfD has no real chance of governingBut his victory would make it difficult to form a coalition executive and, above all, it would deal a new blow to the already battered executive of Scholz, whose declining popularity has influenced the Brandenburg campaign.
This has developed from a national perspective, dominated by issues such as the security-migration binary and German support for Ukraine against Russian invasion, which experts say benefit the AfD and BSW respectively.
Economic issues such as decarbonisation have also played a role, but unlike other regions of the former East Germany such as Thuringia and SaxonyWhere, according to official data, real GDP contracted last year, the Brandenburg economy continues to strengthen and in 2023 experienced above-average growth of 2.1%.
