Exit poll predicts narrow victory for German Social Democrats in Brandenburg

According to the polls, the Social Democratic Party SPD would have won 31.2 to 31.8 percent of the votes. That is a lot more than in the previous election in 2019, when the party had to make do with 26.2 percent. The result would also be better than what the polls had predicted in advance. They gave the SPD about 27 percent.

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The far-right AfD is expected to win 29.2 to 29.9 percent. That is significantly better than five years ago, when AfD won 23.5 percent of the vote. But the far-right party had hoped to become the largest party in Brandenburg after polls in the run-up to the election had put AfD in first place.

Brandenburg has traditionally been an SPD stronghold. Since German reunification in 1990, the Social Democrats have always provided the prime minister. That the SPD could still hold off the AfD is an unexpected success. However, observers attribute the success mainly to the popular prime minister Dietmar Woidke, who had turned the election into a referendum on his future.

In any case, the victory will probably also come as a great relief to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz is posting record lows in the popularity polls and his SPD suffered heavy blows in recent state elections in Thuringia and Saxony. The pressure on the Chancellor would only increase if the AfD were to become the largest party in Brandenburg, Scholz’s hometown.

For third place, the exit polls predict a neck-and-neck race between Sahra Wagenknecht’s left-wing populist BSW (12.0 percent) and the Christian Democratic CDU (11.6 to 11.9 percent). The Greens are said to be flirting with the 5 percent electoral threshold. The polls attribute the party 4.7 to 5.0 percent of the vote. Five years ago, the Greens still won almost 11 percent.