The regional election in Brandenburg – a review

The regional elections in Brandenburg will have a loud reverberation. In view of the results, the federal government cannot continue as before. The first bang has already taken place.

René Zittlau

The preliminary official final result

The press conferences on September 23, 2024 on the results of the regional election in Brandenburg are over. Of course, everyone won again. With the exception of the FDP, because even the math genius Finance Minister Lindner could no longer turn 0.83 percent of the votes into anything positive.

These four parties now make up the new state parliament in Brandenburg:

Certain political circles became nervous due to the pre-election forecasts and hastily propagated “tactical voting” to attract media attention. If they had only suspected where this would ultimately lead, they would probably have left it alone.

The goal, which was set across party and organizational lines (trade unions, churches, etc.), was achieved, but from the point of view of the old parties, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

CDU state leader Michael Kretschmer called for voting SPD. To avoid any misunderstandings: Kretschmer is still the head of the CDU in Saxony. His colleagues from the CDU Brandenburg couldn’t believe their eyes and ears.

It was even funnier: the SPD Brandenburg called on potential Green voters via the local press to vote for the SPD instead. And they did her the favor in droves. The Greens didn’t even try to defend themselves against this, because they trusted the Potsdam-1 constituency, which they won comfortably in the last local election in 2019, thus taking advantage of a peculiarity of Brandenburg’s electoral law: if a party wins only one direct mandate, it enters the state parliament with a faction-sized delegation.

What could possibly go wrong…? Now we know: everything.

In terms of their AfD reflexes, the old parties can be seen as a well-rehearsed team. But with the aforementioned “tactical voting”, they have overreached themselves. Proper tactics also include an impact assessment.

The “tacticians” achieved their goal by a hair’s breadth, as the AfD did not become the strongest party. But the completely irrational tactics, which crossed the boundaries of all political decency and reason, caused the Greens, the Left Party and the Free Voters to be thrown out of the state parliament. This gave the AfD an unexpected boost, because it gained a blocking minority that would probably have been impossible to achieve without tactical maneuvering and was immediately belittled by the mainstream. It can certainly be used to exert influence.

After the election in Thuringia, the AfD’s blocking minority was still a very big issue for those who now see it very differently in Brandenburg.

The reason for achieving the blocking minority is the 22 direct mandates won by the AfD, which gave it more than a third of the seats in parliament. The resulting distribution of seats is causing the remaining old parties real headaches. This is because the SPD campaigned on continuing the existing coalition with the CDU and the Greens. However, the CDU wanted to be in power itself. And both ruled out any cooperation with BSW and AfD.

The CDU has rejected coalition negotiations with the SPD for the time being, saying it has no mandate from the voters. BSW leader Crumbach said: Let the SPD and CDU do it first.

It will be interesting to see how the Gordian knot can be untied. Probably not only one party will have to give up its election promises. As it does every time.

The Prime Minister loses his constituency.

Minister President and SPD leader Woidke even publicly announced that if the AfD became the strongest party, he would no longer be available. Now everyone can decide for themselves how he meant it: in the state, the SPD won by a narrow margin. In his constituency, Woidke lost his direct mandate – to the AfD. This seven-vote difference, which prevented Woidke from being directly elected, seems all the more serious in every respect, given that the SPD leader in the state

Irregularities in the figures

Even before the election, the AfD in particular repeatedly pointed out the irregularities in the counting of postal votes. And indeed, an analysis of the figures leaves some big question marks. Because the ratio of votes cast at the polls and by post is questionable in parts, and indeed cannot be explained logically:

The postal votes counted for the AfD are well out of line. The same applies to the CDU. The extremely positive votes for the CDU are generally explained by the fact that it was allowed to canvass in old people’s and retirement homes before election day. This permission applied to all parties – except for the AfD.

The AfD’s criticism of this practice was dismissed by politicians.

At least there is a plausible explanation for the CDU outlier. There is none for the illogical swings for the AfD. AfD voters who vote by post vote differently than those of all the other parties, to the detriment of the AfD.

But that’s not the only strange thing. AfD voters do this in all constituencies, as the example of Cottbus shows below, and to top it all off, they do so for both the first and second votes:

This peculiarity is limited exclusively to AfD voters. Because if you look at the results of the European and municipal elections in June 2024 in Brandenburg, the same phenomenon can be seen there:

A review of the results of the last Brandenburg regional election in 2019 would be appropriate. However, the author was unable to find any corresponding figures.

Forecast in troubled political times

The regional election in Brandenburg will have an impact on federal politics, whether federal politicians like it or not. The SPD, the Greens and the FDP cannot afford early elections. But that is precisely what is now becoming increasingly likely.

On September 25, 2024 – just three days after the election – the federal executive board of the Greens resigns. He remains in office until the next party conference. Also on September 25, 2024, Alexander Dobrindt calls for the resignation of the federal government in an interview with RTL-ntv. According to Dobrindt, the CDU / CSU is preparing for early elections.

There will be no stopping them now and the end of the Scholz government is only a matter of time. In this case, the very existence of the Greens and the FDP as political forces could be at stake. The days of the Left Party as a party are numbered.

Nor would things look rosy for the SPD in this scenario. It could tear them apart. Scholz and Pistorius are pulling on different ends of the tablecloth. Kühnert and Esken are far too weak to smooth the fronts and will lose in the process. Interior Minister Faeser is doing everything she can to undermine the values of the Basic Law, which are based on freedom of expression and freedom of the press. All of this will lead to massive losses in votes at the federal level.

And the CDU? It must consider with whom it is willing and able to govern in the event of corresponding election results. Old, outdated certainties will not help it in this.

The three regional elections in eastern Germany in September 2024 represent a turning point in Germany’s political and social development since 1990. The political landscape has polarized in such a way that coalitions and/or collaborations previously thought impossible are now perfectly conceivable.

Should the political forces of the old parties and new alliances continue to refuse to accept the will of the voters, the country faces an ordeal that could finally destroy its already very fragile political and social stability.

The dangerous hubris of Germany’s political leadership is evident from this report in Der Spiegel from September 22, 2024, the morning of election day in Brandenburg. Even if, due to the latest developments, Germany will be spared a chancellor candidate like Ricarda Lang, this woman’s statement reveals that her reality, and thus that of the entire Green Party leadership, is completely different and alien to the vast majority of people.