After State elections in Brandenburg Party researcher Thorsten Faas expects the formation of a government to be difficult. The SPD, with its popular Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke, did indeed achieve a strong result in the final stretch, the political scientist from the Free University of Berlin told the German Press Agency.
But the SPD would only have a majority in the state parliament with the Sahra Wagenknecht coalition without the AfD. “That is difficult, none of it has been tried and tested,” said Faas. “It is not certain that this will be a smoothly functioning coalition.”
Something is currently shifting in the party system, he said. The AfD and the BSW, both of which gained significantly in the election, both presented themselves as “something different” from the so-called established parties. “They share this populist element.”
At the same time, the SPD’s strength is partly at the expense of the other centrist parties, said Faas. Woidke’s previous coalition partner, the CDU, only received 12.1 percent of the vote. The second coalition partner, the Greens, failed to clear the five percent hurdleas did the Left and the Free Voters. The FDP gained less than one percent.
Faas considered it significant that the AfD won more than a third of the seats and thus a blocking minority. This would enable the party to block the dissolution of the state parliament or the election of constitutional judges in the future, for example. “These are not everyday issues, but you can’t dismiss them as something that doesn’t matter,” said the political scientist.
The high proportion of young AfD voters must also be taken “very seriously”. However, the voting behavior of young people also shows that they are often open to all options – the SPD is, after all, their number two choice. (dpa)
