Weeks after winning a statewide vote for the first time and nearly winning another, Germany’s far-right parties are taking aim at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) in another regional election that could shape the political future of Germany’s leading government.
Sunday’s seemingly close vote in Brandenburg, around the capital Berlin, will take place in a region the SPD has ruled since German reunification more than three decades ago.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), with its nationalist demands to halt immigration, build wind farms and send weapons to Ukraine, has a lead of about three points in the polls, with nearly 30 percent of voting intentions.
The SPD has been hampered by the unpopularity of the federal government amid high inflation, the impact of the war in Ukraine and a large influx of immigrants, but has recently closed the gap in the polls in Brandenburg.
“Brandenburg is historically an SPD stronghold,” says Philipp Thomeczek, a politics professor at the University of Potsdam. “If they don’t win here, it would be a big blow.”
A year before the national election, the vote could trigger a party backlash against Scholz or, if the SPD wins the state election, confirm him as its candidate for 2025.
Scholz’s conservative opposition is far ahead nationally, with his bloc winning around a third of the vote in most national polls, while the SPD and AfD are in second place.
This week, the conservatives named their candidate for chancellor next year: Friedrich Merz, a sharp-tongued archconservative. But Scholz and many Social Democrats believe that the gaffe-prone Merz’s low personal popularity gives them a chance.
Although no one is saying it outright yet, some in Scholz’s party believe he should follow the example of U.S. President Joe Biden and give way to a more charismatic candidate like Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
However, a victory in Scholz’s home state – his electorate is in the state capital, Potsdam, and his wife is a minister in Brandenburg – could put an end to the murmurings against him.
The party barely mentioned Scholz in its election campaign, instead banking on the popularity of regional Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke, who has a degree in food chemistry. He has said that if the AfD wins a majority of the vote, he will step aside and not even put himself forward as a candidate to lead a potential coalition.
“The goal is to prevent the AfD from winning,” he said.
Unable to form a coalition despite winning a majority of votes in Thuringia earlier this month, the AfD has little chance of forming a state or federal government as all other parties refuse to cooperate with a movement that security services classify as extremist. The AfD has responded to – and denies – allegations of racism and of harboring agents from China and Russia.
Source: Terra
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