Will the Thuringian CDU work with Linke?

[Death of a Salesman]

AfD (the German right-wing party) is generally strongest in the East, and their recent surge means that the cordon sanitaire against them becomes more difficult.

The most recent poll of Thuringia has the following result.
AfD: 30%
Linke: 25%
CDU: 17.5%
SPD: 10%
FDP: 6%
Green: 4%
Others: 7.5%

However, they've risen in national polls since this poll. Assuming the same patterns hold in state polls, the current result would be roughly
AfD: 34.0%
Linke: 24.8%
CDU: 16.4%
SPD: 9.2%
FDP: 4.7%
Green: 3.9%
Others: 7.0%

With a 5% threshold for winning seats, only the AfD, Linke, CDU, and SPD would win seats. This result would mean that the AfD would tie Linke and SPD combined, and a further surge could cause them to surpass the two parties of the left.

In the last election, Linke, SPD, and the Greens voted for a Linke Minister-President, and the CDU and FDP parties abstained. In this situation, if the CDU abstained, the AfD candidate would win.

The CDU has traditionally ruled out working with either party, but they would have to make a choice here. Would they affirmatively vote for a Stalinist? Would they try to use their position of leverage to win the position of Minister-President for themselves?

[S019]

They basically did last time and Thuringian Linke is fairly moderate while Thuringian AfD is especially insane, so I imagine they will again.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I would assume so.

[Yeahsayyeah]

They sort of do while trying to not admit it at the moment, so it is possible that the "they sort of do while trying to not admit it" continues.

The election is over a year away, by the way, so there is no need trying to extrapolate federal polls into state election results.

[CumbrianLefty]

They basically did last time and Thuringian Linke is fairly moderate while Thuringian AfD is especially insane, so I imagine they will again.

So contrary to the original post, not that "Stalinist" after all?

[S019]

They basically did last time and Thuringian Linke is fairly moderate while Thuringian AfD is especially insane, so I imagine they will again.

So contrary to the original post, not that "Stalinist" after all?

No, I've heard that Ramelow could be in the SPD if he was in another state, in fact. As I understand it he is basically a social democrat.

[JimJamUK]

So contrary to the original post, not that "Stalinist" after all?

No, I've heard that Ramelow could be in the SPD if he was in another state, in fact. As I understand it he is basically a social democrat.

Eh, this is a guy who was born in West Germany but upon moving to East Germany immediately joined the SED successor, you don’t do that if you don’t have legitimately far left views.

On accusations of Stalinism, Wikipedia states the following (German posters may know how serious the tweet was):

“In February 2020, Ramelow was criticized because a tweet from the year 2012 surfaced where he posted a photograph of the Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and commented "Comrade Stalin ;-)"

[Yeahsayyeah]

I don't know what kind of right wing media you consume, but this Stalin tweet was ridiculing a typical Soviet style propaganda picture, a delegation of a Thuringian parliamentary delegation saw in the city of Ulyanovsk. (And I had never heard of that story before which says enough of its importance)



Ramelow could be on the left wing of the SPD and one wouldn't notice much difference as a quite typical politician with union background. Weither he went to the PDS because the SPD was insufficently left wing or it was just a party that wasn't powerful by any means and in steep decline in the nineties is up for debate, I think. Another point is, that he was a proponent for red-red-green coalitions early on, when especially the Thuringian SPD was hostile to that idea. All that clearly doesn't make him some kind of unreconstructed Stalinist or whatever.
By the way, it was several years, before he joined the PDS in 1999. He clearly did not have fear of contact towards the PDS before that, but well, if you are a union leader in East Germany, PDS/Left members are an important part of union rank and file.


But aside of the personality of Bodo Ramelow I don't see huge differences ideology- and policy-wise between the East German state parties of The Left.