The historic results of the regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia have hit Berlin like a tsunami on an island in the middle of the ocean. The landslide victory of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has left the so-called “traffic light coalition” – Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals – even more isolated and weak, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose government is the worst-regarded in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Only 20% of citizens are “satisfied” with their performance, a fact that is confirmed every time the polls open in Germany.
This Sunday’s elections only confirmed what all the polls had already predicted. Until the last moment, the three ruling parties maintained the hope that the mobilisation would allow them to access the two regional parliaments. Nothing could be further from the truth: only the Social Democrats managed to have a parliamentary presence in both states. The liberals of the FDP were pulverised and the eco-liberals of the Greens will only be represented in the Saxon Parliament.
shock in the “traffic light coalition”
The reactions of the coalition government parties sound like a broken record. They were already heard after the poor result in the European elections or after the regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse last year. “All democratic parties are now forced to form coalitions without the AfD,” Scholz told Reuters. “The results of Sunday’s elections are also bitter for us. But the SPD remains united,” says the chancellor, who even congratulates himself that his party was not left out in the two regional parliaments. The president does not engage in self-criticism or a public and in-depth analysis of the reasons why a third of voters in Saxony and Thuringia voted for a party that borders on neo-Nazism.
The statements of the Greens and the Liberals are in the same vein. Ricarda Lang, a member of the leadership of the Green Party, believes that the response should be to offer “security” to the population and that climate protection is “more social”. The chairman of the FDP Liberals, Christian Lindner, believes that his party’s debacle is a response to the bad image projected by the “traffic light coalition”, mixed with internal conflicts that are then revealed through leaks to the German press. The parties of the Scholz government therefore show no sign of self-criticism regarding specific measures concerning the war in Ukraine, inflation or the weakness of the German economy, to name just three themes that marked the campaign in Saxony and Thuringia. It is as if a state of shock would have taken over the coalition led by Scholz.
Governance through coalitions
While the federal executive is trying to recover from the electoral fix, elections to form the regional governments of Saxony and Thuringia have already begun. Governance inevitably involves coalitions, since no party has the necessary majority to govern alone. Since none of the political parties is currently willing to come to an agreement with the extreme right, the governability of the two East German states inevitably involves the entry into the governments of the Sarah Wagenkecht Coalition (BSW, in its German acronym), the party founded last January by the former leader of the post-communist Left Party.
The Christian Democrats of the CDU seem obliged to explore a coalition with the BSW in both states if they want to govern with a parliamentary majority. In Saxony, this coalition will have to be completed by the Social Democrats of the SPD. In Thuringia, the situation is more complicated: the victory of the extreme right – with more than 32% of the vote and more than a third of the deputies – forces the CDU to add the left-wing post-communists to a possible coalition with the BSW. The conservatives would thus break their special “cordon sanitaire” towards the post-communists.
“Sanitary cordon” cracked
This probable coalition between the CDU, the BSW and the post-communists – partly heirs of the single party of the defunct socialist East Germany – would mean the breaking of a taboo within German conservatism. Analysts believe that the breaking of this “cordon sanitaire” towards the left could give arguments to the Christian Democrats who have long called for an opening to a coalition with the extreme right AfD.
The truth is that the so-called “cordon sanitaire” or “retaining wall” against the extreme right has long been causing serious cracks in the eastern federations of the CDU. The so-called Thuringia crisis of 2019, after the previous state elections, demonstrated this: the Christian Democrats and the extreme right then voted jointly to make the FDP minority candidate the state premier and thus prevent Bodo Ramelow, leader of the left. , from holding the office.
Angela Merkel, then Federal Chancellor, stepped in, imposed party discipline with an iron fist and forced the Thuringian Christian Democratic Federation to back down. It was a serious warning of what could happen in the future. The results this Sunday in Saxony and Thuringia represent a new step in the normalization of a party like the AfD, whose history has been marked by uncontrolled radicalization but also by electoral progress.
The next test for the German government and the rest of the parties will take place in just 20 days: the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the urban and liberal island of Berlin, is called to the polls. The far-right AfD once again has a good chance of being the leading force, according to the polls. The next political tsunami seems programmed for the shocked Scholz government.
