Polls published before elections are usually not wrong in Germany, but the elections in Brandenburg were unusual in that respect. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the party with the most votes, with 31% of the votes, according to exit polls published by the public broadcaster ARD as soon as the polls closed. The Social Democrats’ sprint in the final days of the campaign, in which poll after poll they were closing the gap with the far right, resulted in a reversal. Alternative for Germany (AfD) finished second with 30% of the votes.
The party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz has thus managed to retain its largest stronghold and fend off the advance of this far-right party, which in the last regional elections on 1 September managed to win in Thuringia and come second in Saxony. The victory of the AfD in eastern Germany caused an earthquake in national politics: for the first time a far-right party managed to win the most votes in a regional parliament since World War II. The cordon sanitaire applied by the other parties will prevent the far-right party from entering governments, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to isolate them.
The victory of the Social Democrats in Brandenburg, the federal state surrounding Berlin, has a meaning that goes far beyond the confirmation of its current chairman, the very popular Dietmar Woidke. The federal SPD can breathe easy having avoided a painful defeat that could potentially destabilise the coalition headed by Scholz. The tripartite coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals is experiencing historically low popularity figures. Polls indicate that even adding up all its voters would not be able to overtake the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) if federal elections were held now.
But there is still a year to go until the polls (28 September 2025), and the victory in Brandenburg is much more than a temporary respite. For Olaf Scholz it means that, for the time being, no one will question whether he is the best possible candidate to take on Friedrich Merz’s CDU. His leadership, although weakened by polls showing his very low popularity, is not disputed within the party.
Analysts had argued that losing Brandenburg, the Social Democratic stronghold where the party has governed uninterruptedly since reunification in 1990, would open the door for debate internally — or perhaps even publicly — about whether to send Scholz into the race. The chancellor, who has already announced that he wants to run, has dodged the bullet. For now.
The turnaround in Brandenburg is partly explained by the high turnout, 46.1% at 2:00 p.m., 15 percentage points more than in 2019. But also by the Woodke effectthe popularity of the current Social Democrat state president. Woidke, 62, has been at the helm of this federal state known for its lakes and forests and for hosting the first Tesla factory in Europe for a decade. Elon Musk’s company is already the largest employer in the region, with 7,000 jobs, and has contributed to its economic success.
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In Brandenburg, unlike in the rest of the country, gross domestic product (GDP) is growing at a good pace. land Nor does it have the problems of depopulation that concern the other states that were part of the former communist Germany: the number of inhabitants (2.5 million, of the 83 that the country has) has remained stable since the fall of the wall and its capital, Potsdam, is an increasingly coveted destination for young professionals who want to get away from the capital, Berlin, while still being close to it.
Woidke avoided the presence of his party colleagues during the campaign. Scholz did not attend any rallies, even though he lives in Potsdam and represents that constituency in the Bundestag. The Social Democrat baron, who has criticised the coalition’s policies, has tried to avoid being associated with the federal SPD and to ensure that the people of Brandenburg vote for him and not for the party. That is why he had made a political gamble that was as risky as it was effective: if he lost the election, he would withdraw from the front line.
In the last elections to the Brandenburg parliament in 2019, the SPD had managed to beat the far right by a narrow margin (26.2% to 23.5%). The Christian Democrats came in third with 15.6% and the Greens in fourth with 10.8%.
The exit polls, which usually deviate by only a few tenths of a point from the count, confirm the reversal that has been taking place in recent elections, with the Greens in decline and the party of the former leader of the left, Sahra Wagenknecht, gaining double-digit support. On Sunday, the Greens lament having obtained 5% of the votes, half of the good result of the last elections and on the threshold of entering parliament. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) confirmed with its result (12%) that it has become a player to be reckoned with in any coalition in eastern Germany. The conservative CDU obtained 12% of the votes.
Although immigration is a federal matter, the election campaign in Brandenburg has been dominated by debates over deportations and asylum laws. The rise of the far right has dragged moderate conservatives and even the Social Democrats into positions that almost no one dared to defend in Germany a decade ago. The AfD’s victories have been accompanied by several cases of knife attacks by refugees that have shocked society and have elevated migration to the top of German concerns.
Scholz’s government has tightened legislation to increase deportations and withdraw benefits from refugees. Under pressure from the Christian Democrat opposition and extremists, it imposed controls at all borders this month to combat illegal migration, in a blow to free movement in the EU that threatens the Schengen area.
