- According to initial projections, Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke’s SPD emerged as the strongest force in the state elections in Brandenburg.
- The AfD, which had been ahead in polls for a long time, ended up in second place.
- According to projections by ARD and ZDF, the new left-populist alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) and the Christian Democrats (CDU) follow.
According to the latest projection from ZDF at 9 p.m., the SPD will receive 30.9 percent, followed by the AfD with 29.7 percent. The Sarah Wagenknecht coalition (BSW) will come in third with 12.9 percent – ahead of the CDU with 11.8 percent. The Greens can expect 4.3 percent of the vote. The party therefore has little chance of being re-elected to the Brandenburg state parliament.
State elections have national significance
In the run-up to the state elections, the AfD claimed that it hoped to “destroy” the “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberals (FDP) in Berlin with an election victory.
However, parties that fail to clear the five percent hurdle still have a chance via the basic mandate clause: If they win at least one direct mandate, they enter the state parliament – with the number of seats according to their second vote result.
“We have made a comeback like never before in the history of our country,” said Woidke at the SPD election party in Potsdam.
REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Before the election, SPD Prime Minister Woidke announced that he would only continue to hold government responsibility if the Social Democrats performed better than the AfD. After the first projections predicted a victory for his party, he told ARD that he would talk to the CDU first. “That is already clear.” With the Greens, they would have to wait until election night.
The question of the coalition
Brandenburg has been governed by a coalition of the SPD, CDU and Greens since 2019. What a future coalition might look like is unclear. The AfD has little chance of forming a government because no one wants to form a coalition with it. The Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies it as a suspected right-wing extremist case. No other party wants to work with it. Party leader Tino Chrupalla said on election night that the goal of “sending Woidke into retirement” had been missed. But the East German elections in Thuringia, Saxony and now Brandenburg were successful: “We won gold once and silver twice.”
In the state election five years ago, a similar picture emerged before the vote as today on Sunday. Ultimately, the Social Democrats, with Woidke at the helm, managed to become the strongest force in a final spurt with 26.2 percent. The AfD followed in second place with 23.5 percent, followed by the CDU with 15.6 percent. The Greens and the Left Party achieved double-digit results with 10.8 and 10.7 percent, respectively, while the Free Voters managed to enter the state parliament with 5.0 percent. The FDP failed to clear the five percent hurdle with 4.1 percent. Voter turnout at the time was 61.3 percent. The SPD has been the Prime Minister of Brandenburg since 1990.