Eurasia Press & News
Looking at a map, eastern Germany is on the right. Looking at the polls, that’s where the far right is too. On Sunday, the German states of Thuringia and Saxony are holding elections, and polls show that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could finish first. Following the AfD’s success in the European Parliament elections in June, state elections (including one next month in neighboring Brandenburg) might further boost Germany’s far right ahead of national elections next year. And in yet another challenge for the centrist parties that have dominated German politics since the end of the Cold War, a new far-left party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), has seen a surge of support in these states.
Below, Atlantic Council experts answer the right questions about Germany’s political future.
- What is the state of play? Who are the key people and parties in the race?
In both elections, the far-right AfD and the far-left BSW are set to achieve strong results. The only traditional party positioned to challenge the AfD in these elections is the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as polling shows all other mainstream parties falling under 10 percent in both elections. Given the strength of the AfD and BSW, it might be impossible to form a government in either state without one of them. However, because the CDU refuses to work with the AfD, BSW would seemingly emerge as the only option—which is an unlikely coalition match.
In Thuringia, the AfD is poised to decisively defeat the CDU. Bjorn Höcke, the AfD’s highly controversial state party leader, is the dominant figure in the AfD’s campaign and its candidate for minister-president. Running against Höcke are the CDU’s Mario Voigt and Bodo Ramelow of the Left Party, who is the current minister-president of Thuringia. However, while the CDU is polling in second at 23 percent, Ramelow’s Left Party is polling in fourth place, well behind BSW’s 18 percent.
In Saxony, polling shows the CDU barely leading the AfD, with each party at approximately 30 percent. The current minister-president of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, is a member of the CDU, and he remains highly popular inside Saxony. BSW is polling in third at 13 percent. Although she is not running for an office in either election, Sahra Wagenknecht is the party’s dominant politician and has been the key figure in BSW’s electoral messaging.
The parties of the current federal coalition—the Greens, the Social Democrats (SPD), and the Free Democrats (FDP)—will likely suffer significant losses. The FDP might fail to reach the 5 percent threshold in both elections, which would result in the party not entering the state legislatures. The same is true for the Greens in Saxony, while the SPD is polling below 7 percent in both states.
—Ian Cameron is a young global professional with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
- What are the expectations for the far right and far left? What is driving their rise?
The German states of Saxony and Thuringia head to the polls this weekend, and the right-wing AfD hopes for an outcome that will secure its place as the strongest party in eastern Germany. The party wants to win, and it may do so by a large margin. In fact, a win in Thuringia or Saxony would be a first state election-level victory for the AfD. A win in both would be a political earthquake. If either outcome comes to pass, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone watching German politics. Over the past few months—indeed, over the past few years—the AfD has jumped in the polls, sitting at a comfortable 17 percent nationwide, and at around 30 percent in both Saxony and Thuringia. By comparison, the SPD is hovering at around 6 percent in both states.
In Germany’s east, a feeling of dejection and stagnation, combined with an economic hangover from German reunification, make it easy for antiestablishment candidates to take hold and spread a message similar to the one shared with rural voters in the United States: “The elites don’t care about you, but we do.” It’s a message built on an anti-immigration platform—exacerbated after a Syrian asylum seeker killed three people in a knife attack in Solingen on August 23. But it’s also driven by a deep mistrust of the European Union, opposition to Ukraine support, opposition to climate change policies, and a general sense that things are “bad” because the “elites” have botched the job.
But it’s not just the far right to look out for. The far-left candidate Wagenknecht, who broke off from the Left Party earlier this year to form the BSW, is also polling in the double digits in both states—20 percent in Thuringia and 10 percent in Saxony. Some even say she’s so far left, she’s right, a phenomenon where both parties meet in the middle of a bizarre and unlikely policy horseshoe. Her party is also pro-Russia, anti-NATO, and wants to focus on social justice through left-leaning economic policies like “job security, higher wages, generous benefits and a revamped tax system.” The kicker? All of these are combined, perhaps surprisingly coming from the far left, with a “restrictive migration policy.” Immigration is where the two parties meet.
—Rachel Rizzo is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
- What would an AfD victory mean for the governments in Saxony and Thuringia?
In the event of a victory for the far right, the question becomes: Will it actually be able to govern? While it might eke out a win, it’s highly unlikely it will garner the over 50 percent necessary to form an outright majority. So it will likely need a coalition.
Thus far, other parties, such as the CDU, have said they won’t enter a coalition with the AfD at either the state or national level. Think of it as a kind of cordon sanitaire—a political tactic whereby political parties refuse to cooperate with the party (or parties) they view as threats, therefore keeping them out of governance and keeping their dangerous policies at bay. The AfD certainly falls into this category. But this means other unlikely bedfellows, such as the CDU and the BSW, might find themselves with the once inconceivable choice of working together. The seeming impossibility of that scenario might mean we’ll see some interesting political posturing not just over the coming weeks, but over the coming months as Germany starts to look ahead to next year’s federal election. We’ll have to wait until after the votes are tallied in Saxony and Thuringia to see what happens at the state level, but one thing is for certain: The next year of German politics is about to heat up.
—Rachel Rizzo
- What is German Chancellor Olaf Scholz most worried about on Sunday?
While state legislatures have a limited impact on Germany’s foreign policy writ large, Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be worried about the impact of September’s state elections on the federal government’s energy and green transition goals. The “traffic light” coalition was founded in large part on its dual promise to tackle climate change and economic stagnation, yet European Parliament elections in June accentuated the coalition’s fall from grace. In Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg, the AfD took center stage.
With a population of over four million, Saxony—where the CDU is polling ahead of the AfD—holds more sway in the Federal Council than the other two states, which could spell continuity in national policy debates and less headache for Scholz than the AfD. But Brandenburg leads Germany in renewable energy per capita, with more solar photovoltaic capacity and wind energy output per head produced than any other state in the country. As a party that questions the notion of human-induced climate change, an AfD victory in Brandenburg and elsewhere could play spoiler for Berlin’s decarbonization targets.
Although policy priorities such as these are certainly a concern for Scholz—from climate change to security, as the high-riding BSW and AfD both campaign on pro-Russian “peace party” rhetoric—perhaps what will worry Scholz the most in these elections is an ever more bruised reputation of the SPD going into the 2025 Bundestag election. On Sunday, voters in Thuringia and Saxony will show the rest of the country what is possible for government if the traffic light sees red.
—Stuart Jones is a program assistant with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
- Could the outcome of the state elections impact Scholz’s ability to govern over the next year?
In the near term, it’s not likely that these election results will affect Scholz’s governing ability, if for no other reason than he and his unpopular three-way coalition have nothing left to lose. Germany does not have a culture of no-confidence votes or the calling of early elections in the face of an electoral loss for the ruling party the same way France does, for example. None of the three coalition partners has any reason to shake the electoral tree for the moment. The liberal FDP would not even enter the Bundestag if elections were held today. Scholz’s Social Democrats would suffer heavy losses. The Greens are the only party that could potentially survive the electoral defeat if they left the coalition, but there is little reason to risk it at this point. So a shaky coalition government will likely continue until it limps to the federal elections in September 2025.
These elections could be a much-needed wake-up call for the SPD and their coalition partners. Whatever Scholz and company are selling, voters in the east are not buying. Scholz will need to shift his messaging and his leadership style now if the SPD and its coalition partners are to have any chance of even a respectable showing come 2025.
—Jörn Fleck is the senior director of the Europe Center.
