Germany’s ruling coalition has stopped at the edge of the abyss – for now

After Thuringia and Saxony voted, Germany has just had another important regional election, this time in the land of Brandenburg. As in the two preceding cases, the Brandenburg election is far more than a local event. Its results reflect and affect German politics as a whole. But Brandenburg is also special, because it was the last of the three. We can now assess their results as a whole.

The first thing to note is that, to a small extent, Brandenburg has bucked the trend. The trend, that is, of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) relentlessly deteriorating. Formerly one of the country’s establishment parties, the chancellorship of the party’s incompetent, opportunistic, and highly unpopular Olaf Scholz has catalyzed its decline, from gradual to rapid and most probably terminal. After this was reflected in the regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia, there was a real possibility of a third drubbing in Brandenburg, a land the SPD has controlled since unification in 1990.

In that case, so the talk of Berlin, Scholz might have been shoved out today. He is a clear liability for the federal elections next year and the SPD has a replacement ready: Unfortunately, the –even by current German standards– fanatic Russophobe, bellicist and NATO true believer Boris Pistorius, now Minister of Defense, enjoys top-notch popularity and may well still push aside the hapless Scholz.

The SPD managed to win in Brandenburg. If win is the word: It leads the right/far-right newcomer party Alternative for Germany (AfD) by less than two percent – 30.9% against 29.2%. If this had happened as little as two years ago, all of Germany would have recognized it for what it really is: another humiliating setback for the Social Democrats.

But the baselines have shifted and, so, Scholz, the chancellor of discontent, stagnation, and malaise, has been spared, for now. Nonetheless, one reason why the regional Brandenburg SPD leadership managed to snatch sort-of-kind-of victory from the jaws of defeat, is that it made a point about distancing itself from Scholz, including by asking him to please not show up. Polls, unsurprisingly, indicate that three quarters of Brandenburg SPD voters did not really want to support the party but felt they had to, in order to defeat the AfD.

AfD may have barely failed to displace SPD at the top, but, riding high on the key topic of migration, its result is still a clear continuation of its ongoing surge, especially but not only in eastern Germany. There is a conclusion of fundamental importance for the future of German politics to be drawn now: Massive attempts to eliminate the AfD – including by manipulative and unethical use of mainstream media, government-sponsored demonstrations, and other foul and silly tricks – have failed. The AfD is part of the system now. And if the establishment parties feel like blaming someone, then that would be themselves.

Germany is, of course, not ruled by the SPD alone, but by the so-called “traffic-light” coalition that also includes the Greens and the market-liberal Free Democrats (FDP). Both were wiped out in Brandenburg. As in Thuringia and Saxony before, the Brandenburg elections confirm that the Berlin coalition as a whole is a walking corpse.

While the FDP has always been a minority taste for professionals and the well-off whose political identity largely exhausts itself in hating taxes, the Greens used to be a serious contender for establishing themselves as a new centrist mainstay, complete with middle-class complacency and EU “value” mediocrity. After making key contributions to ruining the German economy and driving Germany deep into Washington’s proxy war with Russia (the two ‘achievements’ are, of course, mutually reinforcing), that chance is gone. The breathtaking arrogance with which Green leaders keep blaming the SPD (for stealing its voters) and the voters for, in effect, their audacity to vote for anyone else will only accelerate the party’s self-demolition.

Apart from the AfD, the other big winner of the election was the Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht (BSW), another surging new party. It combines left positions on social and economic issues with conservative takes on culture and lifestyle as well as migration: Think higher taxes for the rich, better schools and public transport, and only two genders. That sort of ‘attractively sensible’ thing.

With 13.5% in Brandenburg, the BSW continued its streak of recent successes and beat the mainstream Conservatives of the CDU (12.1 percent). For the CDU, this is a miserable although expected result. Like the SPD, the CDU is in decline. Yet its decline is by no means equally catastrophic: At the federal level, the Conservatives have a good chance to head the next coalition government in 2025.

Despite the AfD’s second place, the mainstream parties still insist on excluding it from government, democratically an at-best-dubious procedure justified by, in best EU “value” manner, defending democracy. For Brandenburg that means that the upshot of the strong BSW and the weak CDU election results is that the SPD will have to open exploratory talks with both if it wants to form a government, which its leader Dietmar Woidke has already announced he will do.

To be precise, no government will be possible without the BSW, while, arithmetically at least, the CDU could be left out. Yet, under Wagenknecht and her co-leader Amira Mohamed Ali, both experienced and smart politicians, the BSW is very unlikely to either simply ‘tolerate’ a minority government of SPD and CDU or agree to enter into a coalition that does not sign up to key BSW demands. These include a no to the current government’s irresponsible and under-debated decision to allow the US to station new intermediate-range missiles in Germany, and a yes to replacing proxy war engagement with diplomacy to end the Ukraine War.

Unless the SPD manages to split at least one BSW deputy off from their party, whether formally or tacitly, it has no way of ruling with the CDU alone. At the same time, up until now, both SPD and CDU have shown themselves obstinate and unwilling to even consider the BSW demands regarding missiles and peace. Woidke has already struck what could be read as a rather condescending tone, declaring that those BSW positions are “not decisive,” since what matters are only regional issues. With that attitude, he may not get far with Wagenknecht’s party.

On the other hand, he has a factual point: at land level, the BSW cannot really do anything about either the missiles or the peace strategy for Ukraine – and its leaders know that as well. One way in which this seeming deadlock may end would be if the SPD were ready to accept writing the BSW positions into the coalition agreement – in one form or the other – while everyone tacitly understands that, at this point, that would remain a largely symbolic step. If, however, the Brandenburg SPD is not ready for even that much of a concession, then that would be a sign that it is not serious about cooperating with the BSW anyhow.

If we zoom out again, the key result from Brandenburg remains that, while just-about saving Olaf Scholz’s political neck for the time being, these elections have not broken the deep trend of a fundamental restructuring of the German party system. The AfD and the BSW are there to stay and still growing. The SPD is on its way to historical insignificance; the traditional Conservatives will last for now, but only as one among several key players. The ultimate driver of these trends is that post-unification Germany has failed to successfully recast its place in Europe and the world: an unimaginative policy of same old, same old has left it stranded with a stagnating economy, an unprecedented loss of sovereignty, and no official vision except, really, hating Russia (again). Expect more change and instability until German elites are ready to do some real rethinking.