In the election for new parliament in the German state of Brandenburg on Sunday, Sept. 22, the Social Democrats (SPD) became the winner with 30.7% of the vote, followed by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 29.4%. The latest opinion polls before the voting had seen the AfD in the lead with 29%, followed by the SPD with 27-28%. Crucial for the SPD certainly was the spectacular endorsement on the eve of the election by Christian Democrat Michael Kretschmer, who won the Sept. 1 election in neighboring Saxony—a message for potential Brandenburg CDU voters to help the SPD defeat the AfD. Indeed, the CDU lost some 2% of the vote it had in the 2019 election, coming out on Sunday in fourth position behind the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) which seized third position with 13.6%, an impressive result given that Brandenburg’s BSW was established just five months ago. The BSW campaign against the war and against weapons deliveries to Ukraine resonated with many voters, whereas the Greens, the country’s leading war party, was voted out of parliament altogether by their pro-war stance. Pre-election polls had seen the peace issue as a high priority for voters, ranking ahead of labor and social issues, education and climate. Top priority was migration, which explains the high votes for the AfD.
The election result will also have national and international repercussions. The failure of the Greens to make it into Thuringia’s parliament on Sept. 1 and now in Brandenburg, and the Free Democrats’ (FDP) failure in all three elections poses a big question mark over the future of the government coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which includes the Greens and FDP. The resurgence of an internal FDP initiative earlier this year, which campaigned for a party membership referendum to force the party out of the coalition before its descending below 1% can be expected. Should the Free Democrats pull out of the national government coalition, it would end the Scholz chancellorship. It remains to be seen whether Scholz’s most recent remarks favoring a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war reflect more substantial intent, or were rather engineering an appeal to voters’ anti-war sentiment to have them vote for the Brandenburg SPD. The anti-war sentiment is, after all, a main reason for the Scholz government to drastically lose opinion poll ratings, now below 15%. The SPD’s success in Brandenburg is not going to change much in that.
Internationally, the Scholz government’s dwindling support has turned it into a lame duck, with many outside Germany wondering if it will survive the remaining year of its term or fail some months before the September 2025 national election. The outcome of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 and the policies of the new President, the war issue also being a leading one there, will also play an important role for major political changes in Germany in the coming weeks. Compared to these challenges, the difficulty of forming a government in Brandenburg, without the Greens and excluding the AfD, in which case a majority cannot be reached without the BSW, seems to be a minor reason of concern.
