🇩🇪 German state & local elections

[Death of a Salesman]

Speaking of the differences in CDU state parties, the next Thuringian state election is next year. Last time, Afd+CDU+FDP got 50.1% of the vote and 53.3% of the seats, good for a brief and very controversial majority (AfD voted for a FDP Minister President, probably with the knowledge of FDP). This was condemned by many in the federal CDU and FDP, and they ended up resigning and letting the communist Left party back in.

The current head of the Thuringia CDU is Christian Hirte, who was not opposed to the Right government but who ended up being forced to resign for this, before returning to lead the Thuringia CDU. Right now, the three parties are polling at 53%. Is a cooperation likely? No. Still, there will be some in the Thuringia CDU who suggest allowing AfD to vote for them is acceptable.

[Death of a Salesman]

The 2024 Thuringian Government Crisis

The election in Thuringia next year might cause some tension for the CDU.

In the last two polls (INSA and Wahlkreisprognose), the average is
AfD: 28
Left: 26
CDU: 18.5
SPD: 10
Green: 5.5
FDP: 5.5

These polls are both quite old and the AfD has gone up since.

A year ago, the average of those two polls was
AfD: 21.5
Left: 22
CDU: 19.5
SPD: 18
Green: 6
FDP: 6.5

If we extrapolated out those changes to next year (probably about 18 months from now), the results would be

AfD: 34.24%
Left: 28.85%
CDU: 16.48%
SPD: 5.22%
Green: 4.73%
FDP: 4.37%

The crucial thing here is that the Greens drop below the threshold (and their vote share has been dropping sharply since January in national polls, so this is pretty likely), which means that RRG drops below AfD.

Constituency seats would break down as
AfD: 26
Left: 15
CDU: 3

Therefore list seats would be
AfD: 10
Left: 15
CDU: 14
SPD: 5

For a total of
AfD: 36
Left: 30
CDU: 17
SPD: 5

The strategy the CDU used in the prior election, of abstaining and allowing RRG to outvote AfD, would no longer suffice to prevent an AfD plurality.

There are a few possibilities here.

1. The CDU could vote for a Left-led government. Only one vote is needed (assuming no CDU members vote for the AfD candidate). This would not be a popular decision among CDU members.

2. The CDU could accept AfD support for their candidate. There isn't a federal coalition to worry about now, but this is still an unpopular move with CDU voters.

3. CDU and Left could collaborate on the election of a SPD Minister President. It would be somewhat ridiculous for a party which barely managed 4th place to have that position, but it would avoid forcing CDU members to vote for a party they're unwilling to work with.


None of these are exactly easy to stomach for the various parties.

[Death of a Salesman]

Disgusting. Even if you think the Scholz government isn't great, it's no reason to vote for a far-right party in a local election.

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1673024100938252289

There is apparently a possibility - I don't know how likely - that Sesselmann might not become Landrat after all.

As a curiosity of German law, the chief executive of a German district has the legal status of a member of the civil service ("Wahlbeamter") rather than that of an elected official.

The Thuringian state law governing the election of such local-level public servants states that persons who can't guarantee a continuous adherence to the principles of the federal and state constitution are ineligible for the office. Therefore the State Administration Office of the Thuringian interior ministry, the agency repsonsible for overseeing the civil service at the local level, has launched a formal examination of Sesselmann's adherence to the constitution.

https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-06/robert-sesselmann-demokratie-ueberpruefung-thueringen

To save our sacred Democracy, we must abolish it.

[Death of a Salesman]

Moved from the federal thread:

https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/politik-inland/online-umfrage-wahl-hammer-in-sachsen-86596620.bild.html

Theoretical AfD-Linke majority in the latest poll in Saxony.

What's the likelihood of an AfD-Linke government? Has Linke not ruled out working with them?

Yes, every party ruled out to form a government with AfD or even rely on their support. A "negative majority" of AfD and Linke would still be complicated though, especially since the CDU passed a resolution into their books a few years ago to rule out any coalition with AfD and Die Linke.

In Thuringa, such a situation already exists since the 2019 election. Die Linke later formed a Red-Red-Green minority cabinet with SPD and Greens (which have no tradition in Germany and are the exception). Initially, a snap election was planned in 2020 that according to polls at the time would have resulted into a majority government of Linke, SPD and Greens (like in the 2014-19 term), but then the pandemic hit. Later on, the CDU walked back from their initial promise to allow a snap election after they started tanking in the polls and their MPs were endangered to lose their seats (Landtag can only be dissolved with a 3/5 majority, ergo the CDU's support was needed). Earlier in the term, a "stability pact" was agreed upon between the Ramelow government and the CDU to pass budgets and other important things, but the agreement expired last year and wasn't renewed. Occiassionally, FDP provides enough votes for laws to be passed and now the next election is scheduled for the next regular date in the fall of 2024.

To elaborate, in the 2019 Thuringian elections AfD won 22 of the 90 seats, RRG won 42, and CDU+FDP won 26. There was no majority for RRG, so all but one of the non-AfD right legislators abstained. Whether this strategy pencils now is not at all clear.

Assuming BSW runs, 89% of Thuringian voters would vote for parties above the threshold.
AfD would have 30.9% of seats, BSW 25.2%, Linke 23.0%, CDU 14.0% & SPD 6.7%. It's impossible to exclude AfD and BSW, so you would need some bizarre BSW CDU SPD coalition to keep AfD out.