SPD set to finish ahead of far-right AfD in Brandenburg vote

Here's the overview of the latest results:

Brandenburg's state vote saw Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) maintain its majority in the eastern state, which it has held since German unification in 1990.

Nevertheless, the vote still proved a significant victory for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, with provisional results suggesting it has secured 30 out of 88 seats. 

This would allow the AfD to block decisions and elections that require a two-thirds majority, such as the election of constitutional judges.

The Sunday vote saw the highest ever voter turnout in the state, standing at 72.9%.

On Monday, parties are meeting to discuss the results of the election.

The AfD has a press conference scheduled for 10 a.m. (0800 GMT), followed by coalition-partners the Free Democratic Party (FDP), which secured less than 1% of the vote, at 11:30 a.m.

The SPD has a press conference shortly afterwards at 11:45 a.m.

The conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), the Left Party and the Greens are all also scheduled to hold press conferences on Monday.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, told reporters in New York that the mood in his party was "good, of course," given the first projections from the Brandenburg state election.

Scholz is in New York for the UN General Assembly. 

He held brief talks with SPD leaders after polls closed and before a meeting with Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Sunday. 

The German dpa news agency cited sources close to the chancellor as saying he was "thoroughly satisfied" but would wait until Monday before offering a more thorough assessment of the election results, which will likely be provisionally finalized by then.

DW chief political editor, Michaela Küfner, who is in New York at present, said even success wouldn't necessarily buoy the chancellor himself.

"But there's just one problem for Olaf Scholz," Küfner said. "Dietmar Woidke, the state premier from the Social Democrats, didn't want to be on a poster with him. And he didn't really want to conduct these elections with Olaf Scholz, because [Scholz's] popularity [ratings are] in the small double-digits."

She said he was still "on the defensive" as chancellor, even if the SPD lead in Brandenburg holds. 

"A loss would have been terrible, but even a win is nothing that he will be credited with," Küfner said.

Projected results continue to vacillate slightly as the vote-counting process continues. 

The most significant change in the last hour was for the Greens. 

They're currently projected to earn 4.6% of the vote, rather than the 5.0% initially projected. 

Falling short of 5% would mean the party is not guaranteed any seats in the state assembly. The figures are still subject to change, although typically the rate of change slows as the process continues.

Should the Greens miss the 5% hurdle, it could simplify coalition negotiations. In that case, the SPD and CDU combined would be more likely to command a parliamentary majority by themselves. 

If more parties with a meaningful vote share fall short of 5%, more of the assembly's 88 seats would be shared out among the parties that cleared the hurdle. 

At the front of the race, the latest projections give the SPD a lead of just 1.1 percentage points, at 30.7% support versus 29.6% for the AfD. 

The CDU is also losing ground against the BSW in the race for third place, now standing at 12.1% versus 13.1% for the new party.

 

DW's chief political correspondent Nina Haase filed this analysis from Brandenburg:

Especially here in the former communist East Germany, we're seeing a divided, polarized society, and that shows in the topics that were considered key by voters.

It's not regional issues but the topic of immigration and, generally speaking, differing world views on geopolitical issues, such as supplying weapons to Ukraine, that voters considered key in this election.

This polarization is also going to show in next year's federal elections, which will, in all likelihood, be a proper stress test for German democracy.

We will very likely see a lot more tactical voting by supporters of democratic centrist parties to prevent victories for Russia-friendly parties such as the far-right Alternative for Germany or the left-wing, anti-migrant Sara Wagenknecht Alliance.

Sebastian Walter, the Left Party candidate for state premier in Brandenburg, said falling short of 5% and losing representation in the state parliament was "a disastrous evening, a disastrous election result." 

His party had claimed more than 10% last time out in 2019. Projections now put them between 3% and 3.5%.

Walter said his party had made its own mistakes. But he also said that he believed many voters supported the SPD, "but not out of conviction," arguing that they were mainly concerned with preventing the AfD from emerging as the largest party. 

He said this could be traced back to the "panic election campaign of the state premier," in reference to the Social Democrats' Dietmar Woidke. 

"We've been shredded by the SPD, we've been shredded by Dietmar Woidke," he said on ARD television. 

He said he was confident that his party would return to the state parliament and that they would be able to "start from square one" again.

While the SPD might well have taken some votes from the Left Party, it seems rather likely that the new challenge from the breakaway leftist BSW, whose founder Sahra Wagnenknecht was once a leading light for the Left Party, played a meaningful role in Sunday's losses.

Walter said it was up to his party to show itself to be a better option for left-wing voters than other groups like the BSW.

The general secretary of the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), Bijan Diir-Sarai, described his party's poor showing in the vote as "predictable" but also as "bitter and disappointing."

Projections put the FDP on a little less than 1% of the vote. The party was never strong in Brandenburg, or the former Communist East Germany more generally, but in 2019 it had won more than 4% support. 

Diir-Sarai said he believed the tensions in the federal coalition government — and the compromises the FDP agreed to with two more left-leaning parties — were hurting the group. 

"At the moment, our unique profile as a party for freedom-loving, optimistic people who are ready to work hard is being masked by a lot of coalition arguments in Berlin," Diir-Sarai said. 

He said the party wanted to "nevertheless look ahead optimistically and with fighting spirit."

Speaking on ARD public television after a short statement to reporters where he had not fielded questions, Diir-Sarai said people expected the federal government to rapidly solve deadlocks on issues like the next year's delayed budget and migration. 

He said this fall needed to be an "autumn of decisions" in Berlin, adding, "We can't permanently keep delaying things." 

The top candidate for the Christian Democrats in Brandenburg, Jan Redmann, described projected results as highly disappointing for his party. 

The CDU is projected to secure 11.9% and only be the fourth-largest party. That's a drop of 3.7 percentage points compared to 2019 and also lower than many opinion polls suggested in the run-up to the vote. 

"It's a bitter evening for us as the CDU because we are far below our expectations according to the initial results," Redmann said. 

Like senior politicians from both the AfD and the Greens, he speculated that the tight race for first between the AfD and the Social Democrats might have hurt his party.  

He said he'd noticed late in the campaign that voters seemed "terrified of ungovernable conditions and terrified of an AfD as the strongest party." 

Controversially, in the run-up to the vote, the CDU state premier in the eastern state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, had endorsed Woidke over Redmann, saying, "We need to stick together." 

"That wasn't helpful at all," Redmann said. "We will certainly discuss this again personally with Michael Kretschmer."

The CDU is the junior coalition to the SPD in the current state legislature in Brandenburg.

It is presumably likely to retain this status or a similar one going forward, although it currently appears unlikely that the two parties will continue to command an outright majority without another partner.

Amira Mohamend Ali, the national co-leader of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), said on ZDF television that the new party would be seeking a "more neutral" party name "but only only after the federal elections" scheduled for next October.

"At the moment we are not thinking about this," she said. 

Ali attributed the party's success to several factors, including its opposition to Germany's provision of military support for Ukraine and its critical position on Israel, and its calls for reduced migration figures.

"I believe we managed to address topics that move a great many people in Brandenburg, first of all the topic of peace," Ali said, before going on to list several other policy areas like health care provision and internal security, and then concluding by saying, "and also the topic of migration moves many people."

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside far-right AfD members planned to watch Sunday's election results in the eastern German state of Brandenburg.

Protesters held placards and banners with slogans including "Potsdam Nazi-free" outside the event on the outskirts of Potsdam, Brandenburg's state capital.

Initial vote count projections put the AfD in second on 29.8% behind the Social Democrats with 31.2% of the vote.

The AfD had been riding high after finishing first in a state election in Thuringia earlier this month and placing a close second to the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) in the state of Saxony.

Brandenburg's domestic intelligence agency has listed the AfD's state-level party organization as a suspected far-right extremist group. The agency also considers several leading AfD figures in Brandenburg, including top AfD candidate Hans-Christoph Berndt, to be confirmed right-wing extremists.

The first prognosis based on a partial vote count points to a slightly clearer lead for the Social Democrats in Brandenburg. 

The figures, published just under an hour after polls closed, projected 31.2% support for the SPD, and 29.8% for the AfD. 

They also suggested that the Christian Democrats (CDU) would lose out in the battle for third place to the new left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). 

The BSW appeared on course for 12.1%, versus 11.8% for the CDU. 

Again, the Greens were placed right on the cusp of the 5% hurdle required to guarantee representation, at exactly 5.0%. 

The Green party's national co-chairperson Omid Nouripour, told ZDF he was "relieved," at least if exit polls prove accurate, that his party would clear the 5% hurdle required to guarantee representation in Brandenburg's state parliament. 

The party had been polling just below this figure before the vote. 

But the party had won 10.8% in 2019, and Nouripour also said the party barely eking its way into the state parliament was "not what we had hoped for." 

He acknowledged falling support nationwide for the Greens as well as for the Social Democrats and Free Democrats, the other two parties that make up the federal government. 

"We want to fight our way out of this, we want to win back trust," Nouripour said, adding that it would be necessary to adapt. "We will work our way out of this slump." 

Nouripour also said he believed the Greens might have struggled as a result of the apparent bump in support for the SPD and Woidke, saying the late boost for the Social Democrats "came at a price for us."

Tino Chrupalla, the co-leader of the AfD at the national level, gave an interview on German TV soon after the results. 

"Our goal, quite clearly, was to become the strongest party. We wanted to send Dietmar Woidke into retirement," Chrupalla said on public broadcaster ZDF, referring to Woidke's statement that he would retire if the SPD failed to finish with the most votes.

"Nevertheless, we have gained significant support, above all, we made big gains among young voters," he said. 

Chrupalla said he believed the SPD's apparent late gains and the CDU's apparent drop in support were related and claimed it was a case of "tactical voting" to keep the AfD from becoming the largest party.

He claimed this showed how "in principle, there are now no differences" between the mainstream rival center-left and center-right parties.

Chrupalla said it had been a bumper month for his party, adding that in the three eastern state elections, "We have won gold once and silver twice."  

Brandenburg's state premier and the Social Democrats lead candidate Dietmar Woidke spoke to supporters in Potsdam soon after the polls closed. 

"It was hard work, that we've put behind us in the past few months," Woidke said. "But we said, 'We will take up this fight.'"

He said the party's goal, "from the beginning," was to prevent the state being branded with a "large brown stamp."

Brown was the party color of Adolf Hitler's NSDAP in the Nazi era, and the color is still used by many in Germany as shorthand for the extreme right. 

Woidke said it was still necessary to exercise caution and see how the evening and counting progressed, and noted that even the two main exit polls differed slightly, saying, "We still need a bit of patience." 

"But in any case, one thing's clear: We have pulled off a comeback the likes of which has never been seen before in the history of this state," he said. 

Woidke did have some words of praise for his party: "As so often in history, it's Social Democrats who could stop the extremists on their way to power."

First analyses also point to increased participation this year compared to the last Brandenburg state election in 2019.

Public broadcaster ZDF's projections pointed to a turnout of 73%, similar to Infratest Dimap's 74% prediction. 

By contrast, turnout in 2019 was 61.3%.