Regional elections in Brandenburg on Sunday could see Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats lose an election in the German state for the first time, with some questioning whether Scholz should run for the country’s chancellorship again.
The SPD has come first in every regional election in the former East German state and led its government since reunification in 1990.
But according to the latest ZDF poll, it is currently in second place with 27% of the vote – neck-and-neck with the far-right AfD (28%).
While the SPD would likely remain in government, with Germany’s centrist parties refusing to cooperate with the far right, this outcome would mark the AfD’s second state election victory in a month.
Low poll numbers in Brandenburg are due to Scholz’s unpopular federal government, according to the SPD’s Brandenburg branch.
“A lot of people tell me: ‘You’re doing well, but we want to get one over on those in Berlin’,” Brandenburg’s SPD Prime Minister of 11 years, Dietmar Woidke, told Spiegel last week.
Although the chancellor’s constituency and private residence are in Potsdam, Brandenburg, Woidke asked Scholz not to accompany him on the campaign trail, with the state’s prime minister banking on his own popularity, with a recent ZDF poll showing that 55% of respondents want him to stay.
Last year, Brandenburg became Germany’s second fastest growing state, boosted by the arrival of Tesla’s first European Gigafactory, which has contributed to its transformation from a post-socialist coal region into a haven for green industry.
But not everything is going smoothly in the region.
Between the depopulated rural areas and the wealthier suburbs that now surround the city of Berlin, national controversies over the government, migration and Russia’s war in Ukraine have given the far right a boost.
Pressure from Pistorius
German media have reported for weeks that discontent with Scholz within the SPD will become more public in the event of a defeat, the third disappointing state election for the SPD after Thuringia and Saxony. For months, his party has been trailing the centre-right CDU and AfD in national polls.
Some have speculated that Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, Germany’s most popular politician, could be parachuted in to run for the chancellorship instead of Scholz, although this is usually dismissed as speculation based on popularity ratings within the party.
For the first time, a more high-profile official publicly backed the scenario this week.
“If someone like Boris Pistorius has such a good reputation, the SPD must consider whether he is the best choice to run for chancellor or whether they should enter the race with the incumbent chancellor,” Dieter Reiter, the social democratic mayor of Munich, told Tagesspiegel.
The SPD branch in Brandenburg is still hoping for a centrist surge, especially as the party has caught up significantly since trailing behind the AfD by 10 points in some polls last year.
“I’m making it clear that this election is only about one thing, our home state of Brandenburg,” Brandenburg’s current prime minister told N-TV.
