AfD set for second spot in eastern elections
01.09.2019
Preliminary official results in regional elections in Saxony and neighboring Brandenburg have indicated that the center-right and center-left will stay on top despite their decline in popularity.
The key takeaways:
- Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) will remain the strongest party in Saxony, with just over 32% of the vote. In Brandenburg, they scored 15.6%.
- The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) will hold on to the top spot in Brandenburg with 26.2%, down from 31.9% in the previous election in 2014. The SPD received just 7.7% of the vote in Saxony.
- The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) made gains in both states, at 27.5% in Saxony and 23.5% in Brandenburg. While these represent massive leaps from their results in 2014, when the party was only a year old, they’re very similar to the AfD’s scores in the two states in the last national election in 2017.
- The Green party, typically at its weakest in Germany’s east, rode its recent success in EU elections to score 8.6% in Saxony, and 10.8% in Brandenburg.
- The Left party saw its share of the vote slip to 10.7% in Brandenburg and 10.4% in Saxony.
- With the SPD and CDU continuing their downward slides, the fact that every other party has sworn not to work with the AfD and the votes relatively evenly dispersed among smaller parties, forming a coalition in both states could be tricky.
Read more at https://www.dw.com/en/germany-afd-set-for-second-spot-in-eastern-elections/a-50249887
