Four elections will take place in Germany in September. None directly affects federal politics, yet each – even Lower Saxony’s local contest – has the potential to shake the government in Berlin.
September’s state and local contests could test both Germany’s political firewall and the resilience of its governing parties. Photo: Christoph Soeder/picture alliance via Getty Images
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Germany is heading into an unusually consequential September at the polls. Between 6 and 20 September, voters in three states will elect new parliaments, while Lower Saxony holds local elections. None is a federal vote, yet any one of them – or all four together – could fundamentally upset the political balance of power. They also pose questions the country has never faced in quite this form.
Could Saxony-Anhalt produce the first AfD-led state government? The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is regarded as a right-wing party and shunned by all other major parties. This leads to another question: can parties that win election after election be permanently kept out of power through increasingly complicated coalitions? In Germany, this policy of refusing to cooperate with the AfD is known as the firewall.
The third question is whether the parties governing at the federal level, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), can survive a month of potentially devastating election results and remain in office.
Events over the past week raise a fourth question: what happens when the political battle over the AfD is no longer confined to election campaigns but extends to the rules governing who is allowed to stand for election in the first place?
In Lower Saxony, several AfD candidates were barred from standing under a new administrative procedure introduced specifically by the SPD-led state government. The order of the elections adds to the political drama. Saxony-Anhalt votes on 6 September, Lower Saxony on 13 September, with Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania following on 20 September.
The Saxony-Anhalt Test
Saxony-Anhalt comes first. Its state election is clearly the most important vote of the coming month and perhaps even of the coming years. The AfD is no longer fighting merely to become the largest opposition party there. Recent polls put it at around 41%–43%, roughly 20 percentage points ahead of the CDU. The Left stands at around 13%, the SPD at about 7% and the Greens at 5%.
Since parties receiving less than 5% of the vote do not enter the state parliament, the Greens are fighting to retain their seats. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) are well below the 5% threshold. The polls leave several very different outcomes open.
Ulrich Siegmund could become Germany’s first AfD minister-president. Photo: Peter Gercke/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
In the first, the AfD wins an absolute majority of seats and thereby secures the post of minister-president. A minister-president is elected by the relevant state parliament and leads the state government, appointing and dismissing ministers, setting the government’s political direction and representing the state within Germany’s federal system.
Certain areas of policy, including justice, culture, education and internal security, are the responsibility of Germany’s federal states. The 5% threshold therefore becomes crucial to the parliamentary arithmetic. If several smaller parties fail to enter the state parliament, a significant share of the votes cast will not count toward the distribution of seats.
With the AfD polling above 40%, the performance of the SPD and Greens could therefore become almost as important as that of the AfD itself. Their results could determine whether the party wins an absolute majority of seats or merely a plurality.
An absolute parliamentary majority would be a political earthquake. AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund could be elected minister-president without a coalition partner. If the AfD wins but falls short of an absolute majority, the firewall comes back into play. All the other parties are expected to maintain their refusal to govern with the AfD. They would have to form a coalition capable of commanding a majority or face the prospect of a minority government.
If the AfD wins by a wide margin but is nevertheless excluded from government, that is likely to intensify the political conflict rather than resolve it. The party could argue that voters had unmistakably made it the dominant political force and that all the other parties had simply banded together to keep it out of power. Such a narrative could reverberate beyond Magdeburg and into the elections that follow.
Candidates Barred from the Ballot
Local elections in Germany rarely attract national attention and tend to be primarily regional affairs. That will not be the case in Lower Saxony on 13 September. Voters will elect local councils in cities, municipalities and districts, as well as mayors, lord mayors and district administrators. The election became politically explosive because of a new procedure for assessing the constitutional loyalty of candidates for senior local office.
Four prominent AfD candidates were barred from standing in controversial proceedings. The process later appeared highly opaque after important documents were destroyed at the Lower Saxony Interior Ministry immediately following the decisions. The legal battles over the issue will not begin until after the election. Lower Saxony will therefore remain politically significant beyond election day.
Winning mayoral or district administrator posts would give the AfD an opportunity to establish itself as a governing political force and demonstrate whether it can be more than a protest party. Paradoxically, the exclusion of individual AfD candidates could also mobilize voters for the party.
Election challenges will follow. Some results could later be invalidated by the courts if candidates were wrongly excluded.
Manuela Schwesig remains one of the SPD’s few proven electoral winners. Photo: Jens Büttner/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
The AfD is also clearly ahead in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Recent polls put it at 36%. Minister-President Manuela Schwesig’s SPD stands at 29%, the Left at 11%, the CDU at 10% and the Greens at exactly 5%. The AfD could therefore once again win an election by a substantial margin. Yet it would still have no path to power.
At the same time, there is no guarantee that the existing SPD-Left state government will retain its majority. The Greens’ result could prove decisive. A minority government is a realistic possibility in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Berlin and the SED Legacy
Berlin presents a different picture. Current polls put the CDU at 20%, the Left at 19%, the AfD at 17%, the Greens at 16% and the SPD at 15%. The FDP and BSW are below 5% and would therefore not be represented in the House of Representatives.
Berlin, like Hamburg and Bremen, is a city-state. Germany’s city-states are broadly equal in status to the country’s other federal states. The governing mayor is the head of the city-state government and essentially performs the functions of a minister-president.
As the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin carries considerable symbolic weight. Elections to the House of Representatives, which corresponds to the state parliament of a non-city state, and the choice of governing mayor therefore matter well beyond the city itself.
Kai Wegner of the CDU currently governs the capital in coalition with the SPD. Several coalitions are possible after the election. If the Left finishes ahead of the Greens and SPD, its lead candidate would have a strong political claim to lead a left-wing governing alliance.
Berlin could therefore get a governing mayor from the ranks of the Left for the first time. Through a series of name changes and mergers, the Left emerged from the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor to the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the ruling party of East Germany. Thirty-six years after German reunification, the capital could be governed by a mayor whose party belongs to the political tradition of the former East German ruling party.
The Federal Government Wobbles
Formally, no state or local election can bring down a federal chancellor. A chancellor can be removed through a constructive vote of no confidence, under which a successor must be elected at the same time.
A resignation or a lost vote of confidence triggers constitutional procedures that can lead either to the election of a new chancellor or to a new Bundestag election. The federal president may dissolve the Bundestag only under very narrow conditions.
The four elections could determine whether Friedrich Merz remains chancellor. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Despite these constitutional safeguards, a combination of an AfD minister-president in Saxony-Anhalt, strong AfD results in Lower Saxony, an AfD election victory in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania even without direct consequences and heavy losses for the CDU and SPD in Berlin could place the governing parties under considerable pressure.
For the CDU, the question would become whether Friedrich Merz is still capable of leading the government. Very poor election results and the loss of two state premiers would be catastrophic for the party. Merz has little support left within his own ranks. If the parliamentary group refused to follow him, that could spell the end of his chancellorship.
SPD in Turmoil
For the SPD, catastrophic results in Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin, combined with a comparatively strong showing by Manuela Schwesig in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, would probably reignite the debate over the party’s leadership and strategy. The party’s co-chairs, federal ministers Lars Klingbeil and Bärbel Bas, would probably struggle to remain in office after an election disaster.
The SPD is attempting a political balancing act. Especially in eastern Germany, it is losing working-class voters to the AfD. In western Germany, those looking for a left-wing option simply vote for the Left or the Greens, while the working-class voters who remain are more likely to be put off by the party’s new woke politics.
The CDU’s sustained shift to the left under Angela Merkel has also encroached on territory traditionally occupied by the SPD’s Seeheimer Kreis. This makes it all the more interesting that the Schwesig model, which at times positions itself to the left of the Left, appears, at least in principle, to work.
September’s Political Aftershocks
If Manuela Schwesig comes close to 29% while the SPD remains extremely weak at the federal level, she would be one of the few Social Democrats still capable of winning an election. There is already speculation about a role for Schwesig in federal politics, although she stresses that she wants to remain minister-president of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
September’s Fantastic Four elections will certainly shake the federal government and may even seal its fate. In any event, they are very likely to shatter a fundamental political assumption. Until now, the AfD has been able to win votes but not governing power. If the party succeeds in having one of its own elected minister-president, the consequences of its rise will become immediately tangible.
