Elections took place in the German state of Brandenburg yesterday. This is the third state election to be held in the past few weeks, following those in Saxony and Thuringia at the beginning of September. Ahead of those two previous elections, we raised a red flag for the possible victory of the far right movement Alternative fur Deutschland. In Saxony and Thuringia, the AfD fared very well. In Thuringia, where 45 seats in the local parliament are needed for a majority, the AfD won 32 seats with 32.8% of the vote, placing ahead of the CDU, with 23 seats and 23.6%, and BSW, with 15 seats and 15.8%. In Saxony, where 61 seats in the local parliament are needed for a majority, the AfD won 40 seats with 30.6% of the vote, just one less seat than the CDU, which received 31.9%. This is making it very hard for the traditional centre-right party to form a governing coalition, especially considering the excellent result of the BSW candidate (receiving 11.8% of votes).
In Brandenburg, the projections show that the AfD may have gathered around 29.5% of the vote, just decimals behind Chancellor Olof Scholz’s SPD, which has governed the state since Germany’s reunification. Although mainstream media are portraying this as a much-needed reprieve for the Chancellor, we read these results as further confirmation of strength of the AfD in East Germany, and of the rise of populist parties, considering the result of BSW, with around 13% of votes, according to projections by TV channels ARD and ZDF.
On the back of this, two key considerations could be made. First, the rise of the populist and extreme right (AfD) and left (BSW) show the dissatisfaction of Eastern Germany’s electorate with the current political system and its results, which are epitomised by the collapse of Germany’s business model, based on cheap energy imports from Russia, assured exports to China, reliable value chains in Eastern Europe and security being paid for by the Americans. These days, in Eastern Germany, the Afd and BSW together are gathering between 43% and 49% of votes. According to polls, at the national level they are favoured by 29% of respondents.
Given this first consideration, the second follows: the same polls show that no party is likely to gain an outright majority in the next Bundestag, leading to the necessity of forming a coalition government again. So, assuming that the CDU led by Friedrich Merz (who was just confirmed as the party candidate for the Chancellorship) will be the first party again in the September 2025 election, the real question is: what coalition partners will the CDU be willing to accept? So far, at both the national and local levels, Friedrich Merz has ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD. This would lead to a re-proposition of a grand coalition with the SPD, and possibly with the Greens (the so-called “Kenya coalition”). But the case of the election of Thomas Kemmerich in Thuringia in 2020, when the votes of both the CDU and the AfD converged on the FDP candidate to the state premiership, shows that this “veto” against any CDU-AfD cooperation may eventually fall, the same way a part of the Republicans in France has decided to support Marine Le Pen during the latest legislative elections. If the AfD does particularly well in this local election, it will be harder for Merz to keep its position, especially if the AfD group, after entering the Bundestag, splits into an extremist component and a comparatively more centrist component.
On the back of this discussion, we want to raise another red flag here, after that raised for France in December 2022 about a possible victory by Marine Le Pen in 2027. These three local elections, just one year before the general election, could be the beginning of a dangerous path for Germany and Europe. If the AfD were to come to power, possibly at the same time as Le Pen becomes the French president, this would probably mark the end of the European integration process.
