Brandenburg, a stronghold of German Social Democrats since reunification in 1990, is expected to remain so for another five years. During the regional elections on Sunday 21 September, this eastern German state, which surrounds Berlin and is the only one that has never changed its majority in thirty years, was coveted by a rapidly rising far right, which managed to achieve historic results during the last two regional elections in 1998.Ahem September, in Thuringia and Saxony.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Dietmar Woidke, its representative at the head of Brandenburg for eleven years, managed to win by a narrow margin in the final stretch (30.9%, according to the almost final count, compared to the far-right party). The right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is credited with 29.3% of the votes, has nevertheless been leading in the polls for several weeks.
In third place, with 13.5% of the vote, is the newly formed party of Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), a splinter party of the left-wing Die Linke, ahead of the Christian Democrats of the CDU, which recorded a crushing defeat (12.1%). Members of the coalition in power in Brandenburg since 2019 with the SPD and the Greens, they hope to continue governing in order to maintain their influence in the Bundesrat, the chamber that represents the Länder at federal level. The Greens, for their part, halve their score and fall below 5%.
Relative victory
This relative victory for the Social Democrats is a relief for the coalition that has led the government in Berlin since 2021, which has been weakened for months by its own internal divisions and the rise of the far right in the east of the country. Above all, it relieves the pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz, himself from the SPD: an advance by the AfD in a historically left-leaning Brandenburg would in fact have been interpreted as a personal denial by the Chancellor, also elected in Potsdam, the state capital. He followed the results on Sunday from New York, where the United Nations General Assembly opens on Monday.
However, the performance of the Social Democrats on Sunday evening can hardly be attributed to the party leading the government. With an unequivocal slogan: “It’s about Brandenburg” – The SPD’s local candidate, Dietmar Woidke, had in recent weeks focused his campaign on the state, explicitly marking his distance from the coalition on issues such as immigration or the war in Ukraine, and deploying treasures of energy to avoid appearing alongside the chancellor. Dubbed the “father” of Brandenburg, Woidke, a 62-year-old agronomist and local figure appreciated beyond SPD voters, had even put his head on the scales. He had promised to step down if the AfD came out on top on Sunday, even if he would not have been able to govern by failing to form an alliance.
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