MNI POLITICAL RISK ANALYSIS-German Elections-Analyst Views

The German states of Thuringia and Saxony held elections to their regional legislatures (Landtags) on 1 September. With strong gains recorded for parties from both the far-right and far-left, the results have garnered national and international attention.

• In Thuringia the far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative fur Deutschland, AfD) topped the vote, marking the first time since 1945 that a party from the far-right has won a state-level election in Germany. In Saxony, the AfD came in second place very narrowly behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
• All three parties in the federal governing coalition – Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the environmentalist Greens, and the pro-business liberal Free Democrats (FDP) – suffered a decline in support and seats in both states. The three parties’ historic weakness in the two eastern states and opinion polling showing that the ‘traffic light’ coalition was set to suffer losses has done little to improve the mood for the parties.
• It was not just the far-right that scored gains. In both states the far-left social conservative Sara Wagenknecht Alliance (Bündnis Sara Wagenknecht, BSW) came in third place. This saw the party overtake Die Linke (The Left), the main German party of the political left in recent years, who Wagenknecht up until 2023 represented in the Bundestag.
• In Thuringia especially, the distribution of seats makes it very difficult to form a workable majority coalition without the inclusion of the AfD. This will put the CDU in a political jam. It either works with the AfD – breaking the cordon sanitaire, inviting criticism from other parties across the political spectrum, and risking losing support nationwide – or the BSW, a party that has halting military aid to Ukraine (which the CDU supports) as a key policy objective. Working with either party risks a backlash from CDU voters and the wider public.

In this article we highlight some of the key views from analysts following the elections on what the wider political and macro implications from the election could be. Please see PDF below for Analyst Views:

MNIPOLITICALRISK-GermanyElections-AnalystViews.pdf