In the state elections in Brandenburg, the SPD led by Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke narrowly defeated the AfD and has once again become the strongest force. Woidke could therefore continue to govern after eleven years in office. The pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also likely to decrease as a result of the SPD’s election victory.
SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil avoided questions on Phoenix about the significance of the election for the Chancellor, but stressed that Scholz had also campaigned in Brandenburg. “Dietmar Woidke made it clear that it was about Brandenburg,” said Klingbeil. Only other parties had suggested that it was about federal politics. The traffic light government now had to make difficult decisions.
Klingbeil also sees the election result in Brandenburg as a message for the entire party.We know that the federal level has not provided any tailwind“, he said. But now it is clear: “Where the SPD deals with the issues of the working middle class, where they deal with industrial jobs, for example, where they deal with the normal issues of the citizens, the SPD wins elections,” said Klingbeil.
General Secretaries of CDU and FDP disappointed
CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann, on the other hand, spoke on ZDF of a “bitter defeat”. The election had been lost, there was no way to sugarcoat it. Linnemann also congratulated the incumbent Prime Minister several times. “Respect to Dietmar Woidke,” said Linnemann. The SPD politician had put everything on the line and won. “That’s what credibility looks like.”
Like his CDU counterpart, FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai also spoke of a “bitter defeat”. The fact that the Liberals would once again fail to enter the state parliament according to projections was “foreseeable”, he said on Sunday evening. But it was “nevertheless bitter and a disappointing evening”. During the election campaign, “polarizing conditions” prevailed and “substantive debates about state politics were hardly possible”, complained Djir-Sarai.
“At the moment, our independent profile as a party for freedom-loving, optimistic and hard-working people is obscured by a lot of coalition disputes in Berlin,” added the general secretary. The FDP still wants to “look ahead optimistically and combatively,” he assured.
Greens also blame AfD’s prevention for the result
Green Party co-chair Ricarda Lang wants to draw conclusions from the election results in the east for the federal election campaign. There is a negative trend “and we will fight our way out of it together,” Lang said on Sunday on ARD. Trust that has been lost must be regained.
She also blamed the Greens’ poor performance on their joint efforts to prevent the AfD from gaining ground. “If the focus is only on tactical voting, i.e. who is actually the lesser evil alongside the AfD, that will become a problem for all democratic parties,” said Lang.
BSW and AfD are satisfied
The co-leader of the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, Amira Mohamed Ali, speaks of a great success for her party. Peace policy was an important topic for the BSW. Participation in the government in the state parliament depends on real change. Participation in the government for a few positions will not simply happen. “We won’t do that.”
The AfD was also satisfied with its state election result despite coming second. “The East is blue,” said the co-leader of the AfD parliamentary group, Alice Weidel. The SPD is currently ahead only because of tactical votes for Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke.
Despite its good performance, the party has no prospect of participating in government: no other party wants to work with it. Federal party leader Tino Chrupalla said that the goal of “sending Woidke into retirement” had been missed. But the East German elections in Thuringia, Saxony and now Brandenburg were successful: “We won gold once and silver twice.” The AfD’s rise in strength has recently also sparked concerns abroad about a shift to the right in Germany, for example among EU and NATO partners.
After the poor performance in the last eastern elections, the Left Party has also lost the largest share of the vote in Brandenburg. “Today is of course a turning point for us as the Left Party,” said party leader Janine Wissler on ZDF. “For the first time, the Left Party has failed to enter an East German state parliament. And that is very bitter.” Her party must reposition itself. She is convinced that the Left Party can be saved.(dpa, AFP, Reuters)
