Scholz Escapes Another Defeat to Far Right in German State Vote

(Bloomberg) — Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats held off the far-right Alternative for Germany and look set to cling on to power in the eastern state of Brandenburg, sparing the chancellor and his party another embarrassing electoral setback.

The SPD, which has ruled the former communist region surrounding Berlin since reunification in 1990, secured a narrow victory in Sunday’s election with 30.9%, according to preliminary results, halting a run of woeful performances by the party in state ballots. The anti-immigrant AfD, which is much stronger in eastern Germany than in the west and won in Thuringia this month, came second with 29.4%.

That means the SPD’s popular state premier, Dietmar Woidke, is likely to remain in power and leaves Scholz grateful that his critics don’t have the result in Brandenburg — which is home to his Potsdam constituency — to add to his list of troubles.

“The problems that lie ahead of us have not gotten any bigger,” Kevin Kuehnert, the SPD general secretary, said in an interview with ARD. “But they haven’t gotten any smaller either.”

With 12 months to go until the next national election, Scholz’s coalition is languishing far behind the conservative opposition in opinion polls as he struggles to impose his authority on the two other parties in his fractious alliance — the Greens and the Free Democrats.

Europe’s biggest economy has been flirting with recession since Scholz took power at the end of 2021 and dramatic setbacks for the country’s fabled carmakers have laid bare the deep-rooted problems afflicting Germany’s manufacturers.

Adding to the chancellor’s headaches, the government is scrambling to prevent UniCredit SpA from taking over the country’s second-biggest bank, Commerzbank AG, after a bungled share sale opened the door to the Italian lender.

Scholz followed the Brandenburg results from New York, where he’s attending a United Nations summit, before joining a virtual SPD leadership meeting. Asked by reporters to characterize the party’s mood, he said: “Good, of course!”

Even though the SPD avoided another debacle, Scholz won’t be able to claim much credit for Sunday’s success.

Woidke, who has run Brandenburg for the past 11 years, sought to distance himself from the federal government during a campaign dominated by the issue of irregular migration — and didn’t invite the chancellor to any of his rallies.

“It seems that once again, as so often in history, it was the Social Democrats who stopped the extremists on their way to power,” Woidke told public broadcaster ARD.

Although he’s set to remain state premier, Woidke won’t be able to continue his current coalition with the conservative Christian Democrats and Greens. Support for the latter collapsed and it missed the 5% threshold for getting into the legislature.

It was a bitter outcome for the party, and more evidence of a growing backlash against climate-friendly policies among some sections of the electorate.

It reflected badly on Annalena Baerbock, one of the party’s highest-profile figures who is Scholz’s foreign minister and also has her constituency in the regional capital Potsdam.

The CDU fared poorly as well, slipping to fourth place with 12% – their third-worst result in any regional German ballot since World War II.

The Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, or BSW — a new party of the far left that was founded only in January — was third with 13%. As no party will cooperate with the AfD, it seems likely that the BSW will be the SPD’s only option to form a majority in a two-party coalition.

Debate about whether Scholz is the right man to lead the SPD into the next general election in just over a year’s time is likely to persist — even within the ranks of his own party. As an alternative, it could consider the popular defense minister, Boris Pistorius, as its lead candidate.

Lars Klingbeil, an SPD co-leader, sought to tamp down the mutterings of internal dissent following the result in Brandenburg, which has about 2 million registered voters.

“We want to go into the federal election with Olaf Scholz,” Klingbeil said in an interview with Phoenix TV. “We are very clear on that.”

To win next year’s national vote, scheduled for Sept. 28, the SPD will have to close a significant gap to the conservative CDU/CSU alliance, which is leading on around 32% — more than the three members of Scholz’s coalition combined.

The SPD, Klingbeil conceded, “still has a lot of homework to do.”

If he does run for a second term, Scholz, 66, will be facing off against Friedrich Merz, the CDU chairman who sealed the conservative nomination last week.

Merz, 68, represents a throwback to a more right-wing version of the CDU and was a longstanding critic of Angela Merkel’s decision to shift the party to a more moderate stance during her 16 years as chancellor.

While Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance has a wide lead over the SPD, his personal polling numbers are much weaker, suggesting the race might be tighter than it seems.

If Germans could vote directly for their head of government, Merz and Scholz would both get 30%, according to an Insa survey published this month. More than a third, or 35%, wouldn’t pick either.

The final regional election before the national vote is in Hamburg at the beginning of March. The city state, where Scholz used to be mayor, is ruled by an SPD-led coalition with the Greens as junior partners and polls suggest the party should retain control.

–With assistance from Michael Nienaber and Zoe Schneeweiss.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com