Brandenburg Elections: Another AfD Triumph on the Horizon

The German people are waking up, much to the dismay and anger of the CDU and the 'Traffic Light Coalition'. May they continue across the country!

From The European Conservative

 By Zoltán Kottász

Voters view migration as the number one concern, but for establishment parties, the priority is preventing the AfD from becoming the strongest force in the state.

Right-wing Right-wing anti-immigration AfD’s strong performance in last week’s German regional elections (first place in Thuringia and runners-up in Saxony) has evidently propelled the party to the top of the opinion polls in the state of Brandenburg.

The party received around a third of all votes in the elections on September 1st and, according to a recent survey, is set to do the same in another eastern state, Brandenburg, which is holding elections on September 22nd.

AfD’s polling numbers in Brandenburg have risen from 24% at the beginning of August to 30% in September, mirroring its results in Thuringia (33%) and Saxony (31%).

Voters in the eastern states are even more fed up with the ruling three-party coalition in Berlin than their western compatriots. The ‘traffic light’ coalition, consisting of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the liberal FDP, has drawn the ire of voters with their pro-migration policies, tax hikes, and radical climate agenda.

Not surprisingly, the SPD, which has governed Brandenburg since the end of communist rule in East Germany in 1990, is projected to achieve its worst-ever result in the state, with the party polling around 20%. The Greens are hovering around the 5% mark needed to enter parliament while the FDP is polling at 1%.

Meanwhile, the centre-right CDU is polling at 15% and the left-wing nationalist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which formed only this year and came third in both Thuringia and Saxony, is projected to receive 14.5% of the votes.

Migration has been a hot topic in the election campaigns in eastern Germany. A recent spate of knife attacks committed by migrants and a terror attack carried out by a Syrian man in Solingen has only added fuel to the fire.

Migration is the most worrying concern for the citizens of Brandenburg, with 40% of people surveyed calling the issue the most serious problem that needs to be addressed. In second place is education with 26%, but the environment and climate—a topic idolised by the traffic light coalition—is only causing worry for 7% of respondents.

Voters seemingly put more faith in AfD to be tougher on migration and security than the mainstream parties that have in recent weeks put forward a number of initiatives to stop terrorists and slow down the influx of migrants—albeit too little, too late.

As Alice Weidel, co-leader of the AfD said on Sunday, September 8th:

We have excessive crime rates. Police crime statistics are through the roof. However, the governments in charge have made no changes at all. There is a lack of political desire for real change with regards to migration. We need a real U-turn in our country, because we do not want the murders, the rapes, the stabbings to continue on our streets and in public spaces. And you will not get that U-turn from the other parties.

She berated the centre-right CDU for appearing to be tough on migration—even suggesting that Germany should reject some migrants at the border—but pointed out that the party let in hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants with its open border policies when it governed Germany at the dawn of the migration crisis in 2015-16.

Despite a third of voters clearly signalling their support for AfD, there is a cordon sanitaire, a ‘firewall’ around the party, meaning it continues to be vilified by the political establishment for being too “extreme,” and therefore, just like in Thuringia and Saxony, will not be given the chance to form or take part in a government in Brandenburg.

The CDU would rather form an alliance with anyone else, even left-wing radicals—and as many parties as needed to gain a majority—than cooperate with the AfD, which would be its natural ally.

As Dieter Stein, editor-in-chief of conservative publication Junge Freiheit aptly puts it:

The CDU has solemnly vowed never to work with the AfD and thus tied itself to coalitions with either the SPD or the Greens (and now even with ex-communists from the BSW). In the future, Germany will be ruled by either Black-Green [black being the colour of CDU] or, most likely, Black-Red coalitions. Again, these alliances will continue to soften the CDU’s already lukewarm positions on migration. With the “firewall,” the CDU has effectively castrated itself.

As a sign of where the political establishment’s priorities lie, Minister-President of Brandenburg Dietmar Woidke (of the Social Democrats) declared in a televised debate on Sunday evening that the most important goal is to prevent the AfD from becoming the strongest force in the state.

Forty-five minutes into the debate, AfD lead candidate Hans-Christoph Berndt left the discussion, complaining that Dietmar Woidke was given more time to speak than all the other candidates. “I have better things to do than to be an extra in Woidke’s election campaign,” he later wrote in a post on his X social media account.

His empty chair on the podium is a symbol of the state of German politics and democracy today: a large chunk of the electorate is silenced for holding a different opinion.