In Brandenburg, voters will decide on the future balance of power in the state parliament on Sunday. Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. Some 2.1 million people in the eastern German state can take part. The focus is on how well the AfD, which leads in surveys, does.
According to its own statements, the AfD hopes to “crush” the traffic light coalition in the federal government with an election victory. The Chancellor’s SPD party, on the other hand, hopes to defend its stronghold and thus stabilize itself. The party is listed as a suspected right-wing extremist cause by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
In Brandenburg itself, Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke, who has been in power for eleven years, has tied his political future to the election results: the Social Democrat has announced that he will resign from his government post if the AfD comes in first place. However, the lack of coalition partners means that the AfD has little chance of governing itself.
So far, Woidke’s SPD has formed a coalition with the CDU and the Greens
What a governing coalition might look like in the future is unclear. In recent surveys, the CDU came in third place, behind the AfD and the SPD, just ahead of the new Sahra Wagenknecht alliance. The Greens, Left, Free Voters and the FDP were below the five percent threshold. If a party obtains a direct mandate, it will still have multiple representatives in the state parliament.
Normally, there are 88 seats to be won in the Potsdam state parliament. If there are many overhang and compensation mandates, there can be a maximum of 110 mandates.
Source: Krone
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