Germany A small state in the former GDR is the last electoral test in Germany before the end of the Merkel era
Germany Angela Merkel's departure opens revolving doors
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has clearly won the last regional elections prior to the legislative elections on September 26 in Germany. The victory of the CDU in the federated state of Saxony-Anhalt was vital and not only because those elections,
irrelevant if it had not been for
the last ones before the big event in autumn
, were the baptism of the new president of the CDU and candidate to the Chancellery Armin Laschet. Saxony-Anhalt is the
Land
where the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has had its best harvests and the population's tiredness to pandemic restrictions led to
fear of a rebound in this formation
.
Two points separated the CDU from the AfD on the eve of the vote
and 14 have remained at the close of the polls
in an election that will go down in history for having registered the worst participation rate since the Unification of Germany in 1990. It has been of the 45% compared to 61% then.
The brake put by the CDU on the AfD has been notorious
. Four years ago, the CDU obtained 29.8% of the vote, compared to 24.3% for AfD. This Sunday, the CDU won 36% of the votes and AfD with 22.5%. Thus, in favor of the CDU, the pulse between the right and the extreme right is broken in the federal state with the least identity of all Germany and possibly less representative of the country. There is a historical explanation. Saxony-Anhalt was dissolved as a state by the communist regime of the GDR and its territory divided among the neighboring states. Saxony-Anhalt regained its status, not all its districts, after the unification of Germany.
The identity as
Land,
erased by decades of communist dictatorship and the search for belonging through the German nationalism that AfD preaches, largely explains
the fertility of that party in the East of the country and in this case in Saxony-Anhalt
. AfD broke out as a protest party to Chancellor Merkel's open-door policy towards refugees, a strategy of confrontation with xenophobic forces that, with the coronavirus crisis, has been transformed into a protest against the cut of rights.
A parallel analysis can be made with Die Linke (the Left), a party formed on the ruins of the Communist Party.
Non-existent in the west of the country,
Die Linke home to nostalgic and disappointed with capitalism
, has managed to retain the third position in Saxony-Anhalt with 11% of the votes.
However, it loses 5.3 points compared to 2016.
In the words of the CDU commissioner for Eastern Affairs, Marco Wanderwizt, "many East Germans who still do not enter democracy" are afflicted with "dictatorial socialization", a comment that has generated great controversy.
Even Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in the former GDR, has condemned those statements.
And yet the CDU campaign in Saxony-Anhalt has been a reflection of the peculiar reality of a
broken, recomposed, deindustrialized
Land
, home to an important cultural heritage, engine of the Bauhaus movement, center of photovoltaic production, depopulated and,
Despite the important projects financed here by the European Union, poor man.
In open competition with the AfD, the leader of that formation and minister president, Reiner Haseloff, has sought the support of the party figures furthest to the right, those who, like Friedrich Merz, could better fish their fishing grounds.
Haseloff, by conviction or convenience, was one of the "barons" who, given the choice between the centrist Laschet or the right-wing Markus Söder as the conservative bloc's candidate for the Chancellery,
publicly opted for his Bavarian colleague
.
The CDU's reading of these elections will be obligatorily in a national key and that involves
interpreting the victory in Saxony-Anhalt as an "impulse" from the candidate Laschet
.
The socialists, frozen
So will Los Verdes. For his candidate to the Chancellery, Annalena Baerbock these elections have also been the first since his nomination. In the 2016 elections, the ecologies entered the regional parliament with a scraping 5.2%. Now they have achieved 6.5%. It is a result that however does not shore up the green tide that could make Baerbock the next chancellor of Germany. Heading into the September elections,
the polls give the Greens 22%, two percentage points behind the CDU-CSU.
The Social Democrats (SPD), with 10.6% in the 2016 elections, have gone to 8.5%, a result that neither punctures nor cuts for the candidate for the Chancellery, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.
The SPD has been frozen in the polls
, even when Scholz is the only one of all those who concur with more experience of government, both at the regional and federal levels. The polls predict for the SPD between 16-17% of the vote.
The only bell in those elections has been given by the liberals of the FDP, who return for the first time in the regional parliament since their departure in 1994. The FDP, which is also advancing at the national level, has achieved, like the Greens, 6.5 % of the votes thus giving a roulette stroke to future negotiations for the formation of the Government.
And in that,
Saxony-Anhalt has shown itself to be more creative than any other
Land
.
There is only one veto.
No party will agree with the AfD.
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