Germany, Social Democrats hold back far-right in regional elections in Brandenburg. But no thanks to Scholz

Brussels – Sigh of relief for the German Social Democratic Party and Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In the elections in Brandenburg, the SPD’s stronghold since Germany’s reunification in 1990, Scholz’s party kept behind the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which was coming off a series of surprising election results -first in the European elections in June, then in the states of Thuringia and Saxony – and which was also in the lead in the polls in the state with the capital Potsdam.

Thanks to a robust anti-AfD voter mobilization (turnout reached 74 percent), according to provisional official results, the SPD won 30.9 percent of the vote, ahead by more than a point of the radical right, which stopped at 29.4 percent. Both gained about five percentage points since the last election. In third place was the red-brown left of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance with 13.4 percent, ahead of the CDU with 11.6 percent. The Greens and the Left (Die Linke) failed to pass the bar of 5 percent. The liberals did not even reach 1 percent.

Scholz can only half-smile: the chancellor saved face in what many had pointed to as a kind of last resort ahead of the September 2025 general election. However, the SPD’s good result is mainly thanks to outgoing Brandenburg premier Dietmar Woidke, who explicitly distanced himself from the Scholz figure during the election campaign, fearing the negative impact of his presence. After eleven years at the helm of the region, Woidke was rewarded thanks to the courageous decision to raise the stakes dramatically, pledging to resign if the AfD beat his party in the elections for the composition of the regional parliament.

Although Brandenburg is one of the Länder with the fewest inhabitants in Germany, all eyes were on Potsdam and the risk that even the fast-rising far right could undermine the Social Democratic fortress around Berlin. After winning 16 percent in the European elections – which secured it 14 seats in the European Parliament – in early September, the AfD strung together two significant results in Thuringia, where it came first in a regional election for the first time, and in Saxony, still held behind only by the CDU.