By Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) – Weeks after leading a state election for the first time and almost winning another, Germany’s far right is targeting Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) in another regional election that could define its political future.
Sunday’s close vote in Brandenburg, the marshy, lakeside area surrounding the capital Berlin, takes place in a region the SPD has governed since reunification more than three decades ago.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, with its nationalist demands to stop immigration, build wind farms and arm Ukraine, has a narrow lead of about three points in the polls, with almost 30% of voting intentions.
The SPD has been hit by the federal government’s unpopularity amid high inflation, the impact of the war in Ukraine and high migration flows, but has recently closed the gap in the Brandenburg polls.
“Brandenburg is historically a stronghold of the SPD,” says Philipp Thomeczek, professor of politics at Potsdam University. “If they don’t win here, it will be a big setback.”
The vote, which comes a year before a national election, could trigger a backlash from the party against Scholz or, if the SPD wins control of the state, confirm him as its candidate for 2025.
Their conservative opponents have a big lead: their bloc gets around a third of the vote in most national polls, while the SPD and AfD are vying for a distant second place.
The conservatives this week chose their candidate for chancellor for next year: Friedrich Merz, a sharp-tongued ultra-conservative. But Scholz and many Social Democrats believe that Merz’s low personal popularity and his gaffe-prone nature give them a chance.
Although no one is saying it openly yet, some in Scholz’s party believe he should follow his idol Joe Biden and step aside to make way for a more charismatic champion like Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
But a victory in Scholz’s home state (his constituency is in the state capital, Potsdam, and his wife is a minister in Brandenburg) could calm the murmurs against him.
The party has barely mentioned Scholz in the campaign, relying instead on the popularity of state premier Dietmar Woidke, a food chemist. He has said that if the AfD wins a majority of votes he will step aside and not even stand as a candidate to lead a possible coalition.
“The aim is to prevent the AfD from winning,” he said.
MORDOR WINDMILLS
The AfD, which failed to form a coalition despite winning a majority of votes in the state of Thuringia earlier this month, has virtually no chance of forming a regional or federal government, given that all other parties refuse to work with a movement that security services label as extremist. The AfD has faced – and denies – accusations of racism and harbouring agents from China and Russia.
Brandenburg presents a mixed economic picture: It’s home to Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) first factory in Europe and has wealthy areas in Berlin’s suburban belt, but some of its outlying towns and agricultural landscapes have been shrinking for decades.
In addition to concerns about Ukraine and migration, the AfD has channelled public anxiety about the energy transition: its state leader, Hans-Christoph Berndt, compared wind farms to “unbearable horror landscapes like Mordor”, the fictional land of evil.
He drew mockery – but also some approval – when in a debate he reinterpreted religious doctrine to say: “As a Catholic, I believe that loving thy neighbour means taking care of our own countrymen.”
If the SPD fails on Sunday, that could open the way for Merz’s Christian Democrats to form a coalition in Brandenburg, perhaps with the support of a new party, the socially conservative and economically left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, and others.
Toppling the SPD in its stronghold would be a boost for the newly appointed Merz and could push an already restive SPD into open rebellion against the chancellor.