Ap and Dpa
The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 23, 2024, p. 28
Potsdam. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats won the election in the state of Brandenburg yesterday, narrowly ahead of a growing far-right party, according to the vote count.
The vote came three weeks after the far-right made gains in two other eastern states.
According to final results published by the state election administration on Tuesday evening, the Social Democrats won 30.9 percent of the vote in the elections for the parliament of Brandenburg, the federal state surrounding Berlin. The far-right Alternative for Germany party came in second with 29.2 percent.
A new left-wing movement, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), came in third with 13.5 points, and the centre-right Christian Democrats got 12.1.
The Social Democrats’ victory is a welcome relief for the embattled Scholz, whose three-party coalition government has had poor results at the polls so far this year.
The Social Democrats have ruled Brandenburg uninterruptedly since German reunification in 1990, and a defeat there would have been a major setback for Scholz, whose constituency is in the state capital, Potsdam.
The chancellor said he would like to be the party’s candidate in the federal elections next fall, so yesterday’s session also served as an indicator for his political future.
It’s fantastic that we wonhe said from New York, where he is attending a meeting of the United Nations, reported the Dpa news agency.
The Social Democrats’ success in Brandenburg, after defeats elsewhere, was largely attributed not to Scholz, but to the efforts of the state’s popular governor, Dietmar Woidke.
She distanced herself from him during the campaign and risked promising to resign in the event of a far-right victory. This is an important victory for me, for my party and for the state of Brandenburg.Woidke commented after the polls closed.
