‘Coalition chaos looms in eastern Germany after state elections,’ intones Der Standard. ‘Foreign countries are sounding the alarm,’ says t-online. ‘Rightward shift predicted,’ screams taz, following up with an ominous piece on ‘What the Right will get up to‘.
Yes indeed, the day has come that our rulers have long feared: Thüringen and Saxony are electing their new state parliaments. We will have initial results at 6pm.
There is little doubt that Alternative für Deutschland will emerge from this election as the strongest party in Thüringen; the latest polls peg its support at 30%. The current ruling coalition, of the Left Party (Die Linke), the Social Democratic Party and the Greens is as good as doomed. The Greens probably won’t make it back into the Landtag, as they appear to be well short of the 5% minimum hurdle for representation:
In Saxony, on the other hand, the establishment may still squeak out another term. The latest polling there suggests that the present coalition of CDU, SPD and Greens may claim just enough seats to form a slim majority government:
There are three things to keep in mind ahead of the results:
- The Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), or the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – which split off from Die Linke last year – commands broad support in both Thüringen and Saxony. Sahra Wagenknecht has ruled out any possibility that her party will cooperate with Alternative für Deutschland. She has also demanded that other potential coalition partners oppose the stationing of U.S. mid-range rockets in Germany and further weapons deliveries to Ukraine. It is an attempt to leverage state politics for national foreign policy outcomes.
- Barring serious intra-party political shifts, it is therefore unlikely that the AfD will enter government in either Thüringen or Saxony. That does not mean it will be powerless, though. In Thüringen, the question is whether the AfD will achieve enough seats in the Landtag to form a so-called blocking minority, or a Sperrminorität. Polls have it directly on the cusp of this crucial threshold. Everything that requires a two-thirds majority of parliament to decide – above all amendments to the state constitution and the election of state constitutional judges – would become impossible without the cooperation of an AfD with more than two-thirds of the parliamentary seats. Saxony distributes seats somewhat differently, making it less feasible for the AfD to achieve the same thing there, even though it’s polling about the same in both states.
- Beyond the AfD, the big question is what kind of governing coalitions will be possible, if the BSW won’t work with the CDU because of its anti-Atlanticism, and nobody including BSW will work with the AfD. There is, as I said, a good chance that the present CDU-SPD-Green coalition of Saxony survives this election, but Saxony will face a serious chance of political crisis if it doesn’t. The chances of crisis are even higher in Thüringen, where as I said the Left-SPD-Green coalition is done for.
UPDATE: The first prognoses are out. ZDF puts the Saxon election as follows…
…and the Thüringen election like this:
ARD has its own prognoses that look somewhat worse for AfD.
UPDATE 2: Current vote counts in Thüringen and Sachsen from state-media assholes at ZDF. AfD and CDU are fighting hard for first place in Saxony, with 31.4% and 31.7% respectively. AfD exceeding polls, ensuring political chaos in Thüringen with 33.2%.
UPDATE 3: Here are the final, official election results for Thüringen:
And here is the distribution of seats in the state parliament:
The Greens did not even make it over the 5% hurdle for representation, and the Left Party (Die Linke) have been neatly split by the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). The old SPD-Left-Green minority Government is history, but who will govern in its place? To maintain its cordon sanitaire against the AfD, the CDU will have to enter a coalition with the wildly unpopular SPD and with the hard socialists and anti-Atlanticists of the BSW. Even that extreme compromise, however, will not be enough for a majority Government, because the CDU, the BSW and the SPD together are one seat short of a majority. The CDU will have to strike some further arrangement of toleration with the Left Party, all merely to discredit itself over the next four years in a weak politically incompatible coalition that exists not to achieve any concrete goals, and not to make anybody’s life better, but only to keep the AfD out of power. Nor will it be possible to shut out the AfD entirely; its 32 seats are more than enough to constitute a blocking minority. It’s strong enough to obstruct amendments to the state constitution and certain judicial appointments – all opportunities at which it can demand concessions.
In its attempt to wall the AfD out, the CDU in Thüringen has walled itself in. The party is slowly destroying itself, and after four years governing with social democrats and Leftists its popularity will only have eroded further. That is why the Thüringen election matters. The wheels are coming off the party cartel machine here, right before our eyes.
Things are not quite as grim for the cartel parties in Saxony, but they’re far from great. There, the urban population in Dresden and Leipzig is sufficient to keep the Greens in parliament, if just barely:
A last-minute “correction” to the election results has deprived AfD of a blocking minority in the Saxon Landtag, but the prospects for the party cartel system are far from rosy. The current CDU-SPD-Green coalition is now three seats short of a majority.
The CDU will have to court the BSW as a new coalition partner, and here it’ll face all the same longer-term problems as its counterparts in Thüringen.
As a direct result of unfavourable elections and its ongoing schemes of triangulation to maintain a lock on power, the party cartel system has largely lost its ability to govern effectively. This is the central problem with the traffic light coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and it will be the curse of whatever coalitions emerge to govern Thüringen and Saxony as well. What is more, the cornerstone of the cartel system – the CDU – is slowly being ground to dust by the cordon sanitaire. This is a self-reinforcing failure. To keep the AfD out of power, the CDU must govern in ever larger and more impotent coalitions with Leftist parties, which coalitions drive it ever further from its Right-leaning base and steer more support to the AfD, which the CDU can only counter by entering still more compromising coalition arrangements.
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