A loss in Brandenburg, a rural state surrounding Berlin that the SPD has controlled since German reunification in 1990, would likely have dashed Scholz’s plans to seek another term as chancellor while also pressuring him to clear the way for a snap election.
Despite the win, exit polls suggested that neither Scholz nor the SPD had much to celebrate. About 75 percent of those who cast ballots for the SPD said they did so not out of genuine affinity for the party, but rather to prevent the AfD from gaining power.
National issues, particularly migration, which Scholz has struggled to manage amid a massive influx of refugees, dominated the campaign and drove voters to the AfD, which bested its 2019 result by six percentage points.
The Greens, which serve as a junior partner to the SPD at the national level, appear to have fared less well. Preliminary results showed the party on the cusp of missing the five-percent threshold for entry into the state parliament. The liberal Free Democrats, the smallest member of Scholz’s coalition, garnered less than one percent of the vote.
The surprise of the night came from the leftist BSW, a party founded earlier this year by Sahra Wagenknecht, a former leader of the Left party who started her own eponymous movement after falling out with the party. The strong showing puts the BSW in the running to build a coalition alongside the SPD, which has ruled out governing with the AfD.
Polls leading up to election day showed the AfD ahead by a whisker, though within the margin of error. Earlier this month the party placed first in a state election in Thuringia and second in Saxony, ratcheting up the pressure on Scholz’s SPD to hold Brandenburg.
Wafflelisk on September 22nd, 2024 at 23:10 UTC »
So far so good. Hopefully sanity prevails
green_flash on September 22nd, 2024 at 22:51 UTC »
The four major German parties that started out in West Germany are increasingly becoming sidelined in East Germany. They really only have some support in the oldest segment of society which is going to evaporate soon as well and in some major cities.
It was most apparent in Thuringia where CDU, SPD, Greens and FDP got only 34% of the vote together. Compare that to for example the West-German state North-Rhine Westphalia where they would take home 75% of the vote according to recent polls.
Almost 50% of the votes in East German states go to the two pro-Russian parties AfD and BSW now. Coalition negotiations in the three East German states that recently had elections will be tough because BSW appears to be the kingmaker in every one of them and they have already hinted at demanding foreign policy changes as a precondition for their support.
realnrh on September 22nd, 2024 at 16:59 UTC »
The logic behind "Hey, we just lost a local election, indicating that we're not currently popular, let's hold a snap election" never made a lot of sense to me. It seems like "we just lost a local election, let's hold off on any national votes as long as possible to give the electorate time to change its mind" would be the more survival-oriented policy.