State election: A social democratic hero and a chancellor on probation

Whatever the traffic light crash or the chancellor’s twilight, there is still something to celebrate for the SPD. The sigh of relief in Berlin’s Willy Brandt House on election night has not been as great for a long time as it was after the first results from Brandenburg. Although no one dared to release the “euphoria brake” immediately after the polling stations closed, the hero of the evening was already clear: Brandenburg’s incumbent and probably future Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the other hand, is likely to only be relieved for a short time by the election.

“The extreme catch-up drive of the SPD Brandenburg and Dietmar Woidke has worked in recent weeks,” stressed General Secretary Kevin Kühnert. Nobody can take that away from him. After all the votes had been counted late in the evening, it was clear: the Social Democratic Prime Minister left the AfD behind in the final meters and can probably govern for another five years. Woidke even achieved a better result than in the last state election in 2019. The SPD over 30 percent – when was that last?

He thus spared the party leadership and the Chancellor an acute crisis. An irony of fate. The Brandenburg Prime Minister explicitly renounced the Chancellor’s support during the election campaign and even distanced himself from the traffic light coalition on the issue of migration. Instead, he used a daring tactic that may have ultimately brought the decisive votes: Woidke went all-in, tied his political future to an election victory and thus relied entirely on his personal popularity, even among non-SPD supporters. He risked everything and won a lot. So he did not win the election with Scholz, but despite the Chancellor’s and his traffic light coalition’s unpopularity.

Scholz on the mood in the SPD: “Good, of course”

The Chancellor did not contribute to Woidke’s election victory with campaign support, but at least with his own vote. Scholz lives in the Brandenburg capital Potsdam and voted by mail before flying to the UN Future Summit in New York on Saturday. Shortly after 5 p.m. he called the Willy Brandt House in Berlin from the German UN Embassy on First Avenue in Manhattan to discuss the first forecasts.

When a journalist asked him a little later at his first meeting after the polls closed what the mood was like in the presidium, he answered with just two words: “Good, of course.” Later he said: “It’s great that we won.” And: “I sensed that something was happening.” That was enough for the day. Scholz can now breathe a sigh of relief.

If Woidke had only come in second place and had he resigned from office as announced, things would have looked very different. The chancellor’s fate was to a certain extent negotiated in Brandenburg. Scholz, who has been stuck deep in the polls for months, is considered to be on the ropes after the disastrous defeats in the European elections as well as in Saxony and Thuringia.

Envious view of US election campaign

One year before the federal election, the SPD is debating whether the 66-year-old is the right candidate for chancellor. At least since people began to look with some envy at the USA, where the replacement of an unpopular head of government as the leading candidate gave the Democrats unexpected momentum. Even party leader Lars Klingbeil had to admit this when he attended the nomination party conference in Chicago.

On election night, Klingbeil made it clear: “We want to go into the federal election with Olaf Scholz.” However, the SPD also knows that difficult tasks lie ahead. “The problems that we have at the federal level and what we want to achieve next year for the federal election are not going away.” There are “things to be clarified in the next few weeks.” The general secretary is not euphoric either: the problems have not gotten bigger – but they have not gotten smaller either.

K question is not yet clarified

The K question has not yet been finally resolved. It was Franz Müntefering, the most popular living ex-party leader, who raised it. And this despite the fact that Scholz had already declared himself as chancellor before the summer break: “I will run for chancellor and become chancellor again.” A week before the election, Munich’s mayor Dieter Reiter publicly suggested Defense Minister Boris Pistorius as a possible candidate for chancellor – and in doing so expressed what many in the SPD think. No top SPD politician is as popular with the population as the 64-year-old Lower Saxon.

Woidke’s election victory will probably give Scholz some breathing room. But he is now basically chancellor on probation. The party expects him to give up his role as moderator in the coalition and deliver. And that means social democratic content: pension package, collective bargaining law, protection of industrial jobs. All issues with potential for conflict in the traffic light coalition. “The party is dissatisfied with where we stand in federal politics. Yes, there is enormous pressure,” said Klingbeil before the election.

But the two smaller traffic light partners are also now entering the last year before the federal election in a rather weakened state. After its disastrous results in Saxony and Thuringia, the FDP once again failed to clear the 5 percent hurdle with 1.1 and 0.9 percent. The Greens – previously in double figures and a governing party – had to worry for hours in the evening about whether they would remain in the state parliament. In the end, it was clear that they would not enter the new state parliament.

Highest hurdle budget

The coalition now has difficult weeks ahead of it. The 2025 budget must be drawn up by the end of November. If the traffic light coalition gets over this hurdle, then there is a good chance that it will get through by the regular election date of September 28, 2025. But things could also turn out differently. Sometimes courage means staying in a coalition despite controversy, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) recently prophesied in the “Rheinische Post”. “But sometimes courage also means taking risks to create new political dynamics.”