Election in eastern Brandenburg – How strong will the AfD be?
Published: Sunday, Sep 22nd 2024, 12:31
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Voters in the eastern German state of Brandenburg are deciding the future balance of power in the state parliament today.
Polling stations opened at 8.00 a.m. in the morning. Around 2.1 million people in the federal state can vote. The main focus is on the question of how well the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) is performing.
AfD suspected of being right-wing extremist
In recent polls, the AfD was just ahead of the Social Democrats (SPD), who have held the office of Minister President in Brandenburg since 1990. The AfD is listed by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (domestic intelligence service) as a suspected right-wing extremist party. This means that the constitutional protectors see "actual indications" that "anti-constitutional aspirations are being pursued".
Result could be dangerous for Chancellor Scholz
The last state election of the year in Germany is also considered to be important in terms of national politics. The AfD is hoping to "smash" the "traffic light" coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals (FDP) in Berlin with an election victory. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's SPD, on the other hand, is hoping to defend its stronghold and thus stabilize itself.
If the AfD replaces the Social Democrats as the strongest force, it could also be politically dangerous for Scholz. One year before the date of the next general election, the SPD politician is considered to be under threat.
In Brandenburg itself, Minister President Dietmar Woidke, who has been in office for eleven years, has linked his political future to the outcome of the election: The Social Democrat has announced that he will relinquish his government post if the AfD comes first. However, the AfD has little prospect of governing itself due to a lack of coalition partners
Brandenburg's Minister President puts all his eggs in one basket
Woidke had expressly distanced himself from Scholz during the election campaign and put all his eggs in one basket with a risky announcement: if the AfD actually became number one, he would resign from government. This enabled him and the SPD to almost catch up with the AfD in the polls on the home straight. As the election campaign drew to a close, Woidke said it was a case of "It's do or die. It's us or them."
AfD with a blocking minority?
As no one wants to form a coalition with the AfD, it has little chance of governing - even if it has already proclaimed its top candidate Hans-Christoph Berndt as the future Minister President and federal leader Alice Weidel as the next Federal Chancellor during the election campaign.
A so-called blocking minority would be relevant in Brandenburg: with more than a third of the seats, the AfD could, for example, block the election of constitutional judges.
View from abroad
The rise of the AfD, which became number one in the state elections in Thuringia three weeks ago and also did very well in Saxony, has recently also triggered concerns abroad about a shift to the right in Germany, for example among partners in NATO and the EU.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) warned that the state election showed how Germany stood "in the world". Felix Klein, the German government's anti-Semitism commissioner, also emphasized in the Funke media group newspapers that the significance of the election goes far beyond the borders of the federal state.
So far, Woidke's SPD in Brandenburg has formed a coalition with the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Greens. What a government coalition might look like in the future remains to be seen. In the latest polls, the CDU was in third place behind the AfD and SPD, just ahead of the new, left-wing populist alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW).
The Greens, the Left Party, the Free Voters and the FDP fell short of the five percent mark. However, if a party wins a direct mandate, it will still enter the state parliament with several MPs.
There are usually 88 seats up for grabs in the Potsdam state parliament. If there are many overhang and compensatory seats, there can be up to 110 seats.
Overhang mandates arise when a party wins more direct mandates and thus more safe seats than it is proportionally entitled to from its second votes. Other parties therefore receive compensatory seats so that the overall ratio to the second vote result is maintained. These are also additional seats in parliament.
In the 2019 state election, the SPD received 26.2 percent, the AfD 23.5 percent, the CDU 15.6 percent, the Left Party 10.7 percent and the FDP 4.1 percent. The Greens came in at 10.8% and the Free Voters at 5.0%.
©Keystone/SDA
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