The German government’s woes are not over yet

Every election in Germany now seems to invite allusions to the country’s dark past. ‘As so often in history, it was the Social Democrats who stopped extremists on their way to power’, said Dietmar Woidke at the weekend.

Woidke has been the SPD minister-president of the eastern German state of Brandenburg since 2013. His comments were made on Sunday, after his party narrowly won the third and last of Germany’s critical state elections of the year. The two previous elections – in Saxony and Thuringia – led to massive gains for populist parties and disastrous losses for the three parties in the government coalition in Berlin, headed by the SPD. It therefore came as a great relief to the members of the Brandenburg SPD that they beat the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), even if only by a mere 1.6 percentage points.

Ironically, Woidke’s opponent, Hans-Christoph Berndt, who leads the AfD in Brandenburg, also drew historical parallels, albeit of a different kind. He took aim at the parties that ‘call themselves democratic’, accusing them of banding together in the manner of the National Front of the German Democratic Republic, a multi-party list containing only state-approved parties, giving East German elections only an illusion of democracy.

Berndt was referring to the election strategy that had led to Woidke’s victory. For weeks, the incumbent focussed his campaign solely on one issue: blocking the AfD. He even announced that he would resign should his party gain fewer votes than the right-wing populists. ‘Them or me’ was his battle cry. In this, he was even supported by leading politicians from the centre-right CDU, nominally his opponents. Just a few days before the election, Michael Kretschmer, the CDU minister-president of Saxony, endorsed Woidke. Kretschmer had himself only narrowly seen off the AfD in his state election a few weeks ago.

Tactical voting against the AfD clearly helped Woidke limp first past the finishing line. Yet, despite all the grim historical allusions, there is actually something quite novel, and democratic, happening in Germany right now.

The first thing to note is that voter participation was higher than ever before in Brandenburg on Sunday. With 73 per cent casting their vote, the turnout was greater than it was even in the wake of German reunification, when East Germans were especially excited to vote in genuinely democratic elections. Voters today clearly feel that elections are important and can make a difference. This is in stark contrast with just a decade ago. Back then, when politics was still widely seen as boring and Angela Merkel was Germany’s undisputed leader, fewer than 48 per cent of Brandenburgers bothered to vote.

Linked to this is the broadening of the populist base, which has given voters new options to choose from. Though much of the discussion has been focussed on the right-wing AfD, another real winner of this election was the left-populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance). The BSW was founded in January by a former member of Die Linke (the Left Party) – the titular Sahra Wagenknecht. In Brandenburg, it managed to continue its series of spectacular election successes, following the European elections in June and those two state elections earlier this month. As in the two other states – Saxony and Thuringia – the BSW came third in Brandenburg, this time with 13.5 per cent of the votes. This put it ahead even of the CDU, which leads in the polls nationally. Like the AfD, the BSW has pledged to shake up mainstream politics and, in particular, to take on Germany’s green-leaning establishment (Wagenknecht famously called the current government coalition ‘the stupidest government in Europe’ and referred to the Green Party as ‘hypocritical and mendacious’).

The BSW is an alternative for those disenchanted voters who feel that the AfD is too right wing, or even far right (a sense confirmed by the sight of AfD members, on election night, singing songs about deportations and holding up posters callings for millions of migrants to be removed). Never before in postwar Germany has a newly founded, non-establishment party risen as quickly as the BSW.

But there is another aspect to this election that makes it quite unprecedented. That is, the hostility and open contempt with which Woidke treated the current government coalition in Berlin. Though his campaign was rhetorically directed against the AfD, he was clearly fighting on another front, too – against the leading members of his own party. So unpopular is the current government that Woidke used every trick in the book to try to convince voters that he had nothing to do with it. There were no rallies with Olaf Scholz, Germany’s SPD chancellor, nor any other leading government or party representatives. Apparently Scholz, whose Potsdam constituency is actually in the state of Brandenburg, was asked to keep away.

Instead, Woidke busily criticised the government’s green policies, such as its plans to phase out coal in 2030 and its promotion of heat pumps, branding them naive. He also ranted against Germany’s asylum policy, calling it an ‘insanity that no citizen could understand any more’. A nationwide poll, published just a week before the elections, showed that only three per cent of Germans approve of the government. This will have undoubtedly convinced Woidke that distancing himself from Berlin was the only way forward.

Woidke might now be jubilant at having spared Brandenburg from the ‘big brown stamp’, as he calls the AfD. But more thoughtful voices are pointing out that his narrow win has only highlighted the deep rifts running through German society.

Of particular concern for the mainstream is that, as in previous elections, it was again younger voters who supported the populists. Thirty per cent of first-time voters opted for the AfD, making it the most popular party among the young. Woidke’s SPD, on the other hand, has become a party of the elderly. Only 20 per cent of under 34-year-olds voted for the SPD, while 50 per cent of those above 70 did.

The downfall of the Greens, once seen as the party of the young, has been spectacular. Before the election, they were in coalition in the state government with the SPD. But having lost almost seven percentage points, they are no longer even represented in the local parliament.

This has left Woidke looking for a new coalition partner. The CDU – bitter at having been pushed aside through tactical voting and lacking the seats to form a stable coalition, in any case – has ruled itself out. And so the SPD will now have to form a state government with the BSW. This is another triumph for the new party, which has already presented a list of demands. These include a reform of the education system and an end to arms deliveries to Ukraine. The BSW will become a ‘real problem’ for the SPD, warns one commentator on Germany’s national broadcaster.

Whatever one may think of the BSW’s specific demands, it’s clear that the established parties will continue to be routed by the populists.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl is spiked’s Germany correspondent.