Brandenburg, a bastion of the German Social Democrats since reunification in 1990, is set to remain so for another five years. During regional elections on Sunday, September 21, this eastern German state – which surrounds Berlin and is the only one to have never changed its majority for thirty years – was coveted by a far right on the rise, which managed to obtain historic scores in the last two regional elections on September 1er September, in Thuringia and Saxony.
The social democratic party SPD and Dietmar Woidke, its representative at the head of Brandenburg for eleven years, managed in the final straight to win by a narrow margin (30.9%, according to the quasi-final count), against the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) credited with 29.3% of the vote, and yet given the lead for several weeks in the polls.
In third place with 13.5% of the vote, the newly created party of Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), a dissident of the left-wing Die Linke party, is ahead of the Christian Democrats of the CDU, who suffered a bitter defeat (12.1%). Members of the coalition in power in Brandenburg since 2019 with the SPD and the Greens, the latter hope to continue to govern in order to maintain influence in the Bundesrat, the chamber that represents the Länder at the federal level. The Greens, for their part, halved their score and fell below 5%.
Relative victory
This relative victory for the Social Democrats comes as a relief for the coalition that has led the government in Berlin since 2021, and has been weakened for months by its own internal divisions and by the advance of the extreme right in the east of the country. Above all, it eases the pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz, himself from the SPD: an AfD lead in a historically left-wing Brandenburg would have been interpreted as a personal disavowal for the Chancellor, who was also elected from Potsdam, the state capital. He followed Sunday's results 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 unambiguous slogan – “This is Brandenburg” – The local SPD candidate, Dietmar Woidke, had in recent weeks focused his campaign on the state, explicitly distancing himself from the coalition on issues such as immigration and the war in Ukraine, and going to great lengths to avoid appearing alongside the chancellor. Nicknamed the “father” of Brandenburg, Mr Woidke, a 62-year-old agronomist and a local figure appreciated beyond SPD voters, had even put his head in the balance. He had promised to step down if the AfD came out on top on Sunday, even if it had been unable to govern because it had failed to form an alliance.
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Source: Lemonde
