CDU Outperform Polling In Saxony-Anhalt Election In Boost To Laschet

Germany's centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) significantly outperformed opinion polls in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday 6 June, winning a comfortable plurality of votes when polls had initially suggested a tight race.

• The CDU won 37.1% of the vote, up 7.4% on the 2017 result. The right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) held onto second place with 20.8% (-3.4) in a disappointing night for the party. The main parties of the left, the far-left Die Linke and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) both lost vote share and seats, taking third and fourth places respectively (see chart below). The liberal centre-left and centre-right did better, with the pro-business liberal Free Democrats re-entering the regional Landtag with seven seats, the same total won by the environmentalist Greens, who gained an additional two seats from the party's previous result.

Source: State Returning Officer, MNI

• The current regional gov't is formed by the CDU, SPD and Greens. With 49 seats now required for a majority this could be done with just the CDU and SPD, or to ensure a wider majority in a 'Kenya coalition' including the Greens as a third party or a 'Germany' coalition with the FDP.
• The result will come as a major relief for the CDU's chancellor candidate for the September federal election, Armin Laschet. This was the final electoral test before the federal election, and despite being a state-level election with local factors at play (crucially the popularity of CDU state Minister-President Reiner Haseloff who consistently polled better than his party), a poor result for the CDU would pile even more pressure on Laschet, who has struggled with woeful head-to-head polls against other chancellor candidates and poor results in previous state elections.
• As such the result in Saxony-Anhalt is likely to lift the pressure on Laschet somewhat as the election campaign begins to shift into higher gears as autumn approaches.
• For the AfD the result is a blow. The states of former East Germany are where they often perform strongest and polls had shown the party potentially winning a plurality in Saxony-Anhalt. To in the event go backwards in vote share can only be seen as a failure, highlighting the party's difficulty in clearing hard ceilings of support both at the state and federal level.