For the second time in three weeks, the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has received a significant percentage of the votes at a state election in eastern Germany. The far-right party won 29.5 per cent of the votes in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin. Given the polls going into Sunday, the AfD might even be disappointed that it did not place first, rather than second behind the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Even though the SPD won by a slight margin, the pressure on the federal government led by Olaf Scholz and the Social Democrats may increase further in the coming weeks. In the lead-up to the elections, tensions within the SPD rose. Dietmar Woidke, the SPD’s state president, did not want to appear together with Scholz during election campaign events. Hence, Scholz travelled independently through Brandenburg, where he won his seat in the Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament, in 2021. At the same time, the pressure on Saskia Esken, the co-chairwoman of the SPD, has risen and her resignation from her post has become a realistic scenario.
At some point, German voters might ditch the mainstream parties for good
Three weeks before the election in Brandenburg, the AfD won the state election in Thuringia and scored second in Saxony.
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