State election on 22 September: Brandenburg trend: SPD clearly gains ground, but remains second

State election on 22 September
Brandenburg trend: SPD clearly gains ground, but remains second

05.09.2024, 23:38

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After the two weak results in Saxony and Thuringia, the state election in Brandenburg could give the SPD a little boost. In a recent poll, it is up on June. Nevertheless, it only comes in second. The BSW, on the other hand, is weakening slightly.

According to a new poll on the state election, the AfD has gained ground and remains ahead in the voters’ favor. The SPD is also gaining support, but cannot reduce its lead as the second-placed party. This is the result of the current “Brandenburg Trend” by the opinion research institute Infratest Dimap on behalf of the ARD political magazine “Kontraste” from the rbb.

A new state parliament will be elected in Brandenburg on September 22nd. A total of 1,207 eligible voters in Brandenburg were interviewed for the representative survey on September 3rd and 4th.

AfD increases to 27 percent according to survey

If there were a state election next Sunday, the AfD would get 27 percent, according to the survey. The party is going into the election campaign with top candidate Hans-Christoph Berndt. Compared to the July survey by Infratest Dimap, the party gained four percentage points, just like the SPD, which now has 23 percent. The Social Democrats have Dietmar Woidke as the Prime Minister in Brandenburg. The SPD governs the state together with the CDU and the Greens.

According to the new survey, the CDU has lost one point and is now at 18 percent. The party of top candidate Jan Redmann is now in third place, five points behind the SPD. The Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance around top candidate Robert Crumbach, which is running for the first time, could expect to receive 15 percent of the vote – that is one percentage point less than in the July survey.

It could be tight for the Greens

The Greens’ support has fallen: they lost two points and would only just be able to enter the state parliament again with five percent. In the 2019 state election, the Greens achieved just under 11 percent. The Left Party is at four percent, BVB/Free Voters at three percent – ​​which would mean they would not be in parliament.

However, the three parties in Brandenburg can hope to enter the state parliament in proportion to their percentage strength if they win at least one direct mandate. This is made possible in the state by the so-called basic mandate clause. In the last election in 2019, the Greens and the Free Voters each won a direct mandate. However, neither party ultimately needed it. The Greens won 10.8 percent at the time, the Free Voters 5.0 percent.

The winner of the 2019 state election was the SPD with 26.2 percent. They entered into a coalition with the CDU, which achieved 15.6 percent at the time, and the Greens. The alliance has since formed the state government, which would continue to have a majority according to the new poll – provided that the Greens manage to get back into power.

Woidke retires in second place

Since all other parties have ruled out cooperation with the AfD, the BSW would otherwise come into play, which is currently being discussed as a partner in CDU-led governments following the elections in Saxony and Thuringia. Prime Minister Woidke announced that he would withdraw if the SPD did not come in first place for the first time since 1990.

According to the survey, voters in Brandenburg are divided when it comes to BSW participation in government. 42 percent would be in favor of this and 42 percent would not be in favor of it. 31 percent are in favor of AfD participation in government, while 61 percent are against it.

Election polls are always subject to uncertainty. Among other things, declining party ties and increasingly short-term voting decisions by opinion research institutes make it difficult to weight the data collected. In principle, polls only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not predictions of the election outcome.