2024 Brandenburg State Election

The election to the state parliament Landtag of Brandenburg of 22 September 2024 was the third state election within Germany in the month of September 2024, three weeks after the state elections in Thuringia and in Saxony, all part of former East Germany. The outgoing government was a black-red-green "flag of Kenya" coalition consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and The Greens, led by Minister-President Dietmar Woidke of the SPD.

Despite contrary polling showing them consistently trailing in second place, the SPD, which has governed Brandenburg since its 1990 re-establishment, remained the largest party with a five percentage point swing in its favour. The Alternative for Germany received a swing of six points and won just over 29% of the vote. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) debuted at 13.5%, followed by the CDU which declined to 12%. The outgoing government narrowly lost its majority as the Greens collapsed and fell short of the 5% electoral threshold, losing all their seats. The Left also suffered major losses and fell out of the Landtag, as did the Free Voters. The FDP, which had won 9.3% of the vote in the 2021 German federal election in Brandenburg, fell to 0.8% of the vote, their worst result in any state election ever, eclipsing the 0.9% of the vote in Saxony two weeks prior.

Background

The 2019 Brandenburg state election had resulted in the formation of the third Woidke cabinet, a "Kenya" coalition of the SPD, CDU, and Greens. The SPD remained the strongest party with small losses, just ahead of the AfD, which became the second largest party on a large swing. The CDU and The Left each recorded significant losses. The Greens achieved their best result to date with almost 11%. BVB/Free Voters improved to 5.0%. The FDP remained below the electoral threshold with 4.1% and did not win seats.

The SPD has governed Brandenburg continuously since the first post-reunification election in 1990. In the 2021 German federal election, the party won all 10 federal constituencies across the state.

The Brandenburg election was the third in a string of elections in Eastern Germany in September 2024, each of which saw a strong performance for the far-right AfD. In Thuringia the party became the largest in a state parliament for the first time; it also recorded its best result to date in Saxony. The parties involved in the federal Scholz government also suffered losses in each. The performance of Woidke's SPD in Brandenburg was considered a key test of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's leadership. The Brandenburg SPD campaigned on Woidke's personal popularity; Woidke pledged to resign if the SPD did not remain the largest party, encouraging tactical voting to deny AfD first place. He also received an unusual endorsement from the Minister-President of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer of CDU, who stated "the strongest party needs to be a democratic party".

Parties and lists

Opinion polls

Graphical summary

Party polling

Results

The SPD secured a victory, increasing both its popular vote percentage and the amount of seats held. Nonetheless, the two largest populist parties – the left-wing BSW and the far-right AfD – earned significant results, combining for precisely half of all the seats in the legislature. The Greens, the Left and the BVB/Free Voters faced a complete defeat, losing all of their seats. Finally, the FDP fell to less than 1% of the vote.

Overall, the outgoing coalition between the SPD, the CDU and the Greens earned 47.1% of the vote in a decline compared to their combined total of 52.6% of the vote in the 2019 election.

File:Brandenburg Zweitstimmen SPD 2024.svg, SPD vote
File:Brandenburg Zweitstimmen AfD 2024.svg, AfD vote
File:Brandenburg Zweitstimmen BSW 2024.svg, BSW vote
File:Brandenburg Zweitstimmen CDU 2024.svg, CDU vote
File:Brandenburg Zweitstimmen Grüne 2024.svg, Green vote
File:Brandenburg Zweitstimmen Linke 2024.svg, Linke vote
File:Brandenburg Zweitstimmen BVB-FW 2024.svg, BVB-FW vote
File:2024-brandenburg-election-turnout.svg, Turnout

Members

Electorate

Aftermath

Immediate reaction to the results focused on the successful use of tactical voting to deny AfD first place, and the SPD closing the large gap in pre-election polling as a result. The ARD exit poll found that 75 percent of SPD voters and 59 percent of CDU voters agreed with the statement "I was not convinced by the party, but I'm voting for it to prevent a strong AfD".

The AfD won the most constituencies (Direktmandat). This was the worst result for CDU in any state election in the east. Lead candidate Jan Redmann was critical of what he called Woidke's "AfD or me" campaign tactics, arguing that it only served to depress the vote share of the other mainstream parties and did not dissuade anyone from voting for AfD. As well, state party leaders criticized CDU Minister-President Michael Kretschmer of Saxony's endorsement of Woidke in the run-up to the election; general secretary Gordon Hoffmann called the endorsement "uncooperative" while Redmann stated it was "completely unhelpful" and disappointed CDU campaigners. The CDU campaign was also damaged by Redmann's arrest for drunk driving in Potsdam in mid-July. He was stopped driving an electric scooter with a blood alcohol content of 1.28 per mille (0.128%), well above the 0.5 legal limit and also past the limit of 1.1 where the offense becomes a crime with a potential prison sentence instead of only a fine. Despite questions about his fitness for office, he remained their lead candidate.

This was also the worst result for FDP in any state, federal or European election in the party's history. Its total of 12,462 party-list votes, a share of 0.8%, barely eclipsed the 12,450 invalid party-list votes. FDP federal leader Christian Lindner blamed the poor result on the "tactical situation" and the unpopularity of the federal traffic light coalition, not on lead candidate Zyon Braun or any of the campaign.

The seat distribution was in doubt for part of election night, as Brandenburg has a version of the "basic mandate clause" (''Grundmandatsklausel'') where all parties winning at least one constituency seat are granted full proportional representation according to their share of party-list votes. Both Green MP Marie Schäffer and BVB-FW leader Péter Vida were competitive in their respective constituencies in Potsdam and Barnim, though neither ultimately won; their parties lost all of their seats as a result. The Left failed to pass the five-percent electoral threshold and also lost its seats, marking the first time the party is not represented in a state parliament in the former East Germany.

Dietmar Woidke lost his constituency seat Spree-Neiße I, which he had represented since 2009, to the AfD candidate Steffen Kubitzki by a margin of seven votes. As all leading candidates are also first on their party's list, Woidke instead fills one of SPD's thirteen list seats.

With more than one-third of seats, AfD has a "blocking minority" (''Sperrminorität'') that allows it to veto certain parliamentary actions requiring a two-thirds majority, even if it is not in government. In Brandenburg, this includes the selection of constitutional court judges and approval of state constitutional amendments.

On 25 September, the joint leaders of Alliance 90/The Greens, Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang, announced their resignations after poor results in the three eastern state elections. After the Greens entered all of them as part of the respective governing coalitions, it was wiped out in Brandenburg and Thuringia, while it received only 5.1% of the party-list vote in Saxony to narrowly retain representation.

Government formation

The incumbent " Kenya coalition" is no longer possible. With an SPD-CDU coalition one seat short of a majority, and all parties having ruled out working with AfD, the only two mathematically possible majority coalitions are that of SPD and BSW or SPD, BSW and CDU. SPD general secretary Kevin Kühnert confirmed the day after the election that coalition talks would take place with BSW.

In a press conference at SPD headquarters in Berlin later on 23 September, Woidke announced he was inviting both BSW and CDU to begin exploratory talks. BSW leader Robert Crumbach would not commit to participating in government and suggested the SPD-CDU minority government would be workable. CDU leaders, however, ruled out any participation in government in view of their party's poor results. Hoffmann reacted skeptically to the invitation: "To be honest, I don't know what there is to discuss in these talks...we have no mandate to govern."

Exploratory talks between SPD and BSW (Red–purple coalition) began on 1 October, with a second round occurring the following week. Woidke described good progress but emphasized that "exploratory talks are exploratory talks. The decision is made at the end." The SPD state executive committee scheduled a meeting at the end of the month to potentially consider a recommendation to move forward with negotiations. On 28 October, both parties presented an exploratory paper and reached an agreement on the issue of peace, clearing the way for coalition negotiations to begin.

Woidke and Crumbach announced their parties had reached a coalition agreement on 27 November. The coalition has a narrow majority of two seats; talks were threatened when one BSW MdL, Sven Hornauf, publicly stated he would not vote for Woidke in protest of the planned stationing of Arrow 3 missiles at the Holzdorf Air Base. However, Crumbach criticized Hornauf for his statement and was able to confirm the coalition would still have the votes for Woidke without him.

Minister-President election

The Minister-President election took place on 11 December. Any nominee requires an absolute majority on the first two ballots, and a plurality on the third ballot. One AfD member was absent, placing the absolute majority at 45 of 87 votes. Unexpectedly, Woidke lost two additional votes from his own coalition and failed to win a majority on the first ballot. The second ballot then had five apparent votes from the opposition for Woidke. CDU and AfD leaders each accused the other party of providing those votes, though no claims can be proven as the election is by secret ballot.

See also

* Politics of Brandenburg

Notes

References

{{Brandenburg state elections

Elections in Brandenburg
2024 elections in Germany