State elections in Saxony and Thuringia: Without the AfD, the CDU would be half as strong

Amtsinhaber haben eigentlich leichtes Spiel, gelten sie doch als Landesväter oder Landesmütter. Es muss schon viel passieren, dass ihre Parteien bei einer Landtagswahl Platz eins verlieren. Zumal, wenn die AfD selbigen zu erobern droht.

Thüringens Ministerpräsident Bodo Ramelow ist mit seiner Linken nun mit einmalig hohen Verlusten auf Platz vier abgestürzt. Sachsens Ministerpräsident Michael Kretschmer wird mit seiner CDU gerade so noch stärkste Kraft, aber die Regierungsbildung wird schwierig.

In den vergangenen Jahren haben nur zwei Regierungschefs nach einer Landtagswahl ihr Amt verloren: Tobias Hans im Saarland und Franziska Giffey in Berlin. Die beiden Politiker hatten ungewöhnlich schlechte Zustimmungswerte. Bei Ramelow war das lange anders, doch mittlerweile ist auch mit ihm nur noch jeder zweite Wähler zufrieden. Bei Kretschmer sieht es nur wenig besser aus.

Diese Werte reichen nicht, um die AfD (weit) hinter sich zu lassen. Die wiederum hat ihre Zugewinne weniger den Beliebtheitswerten ihrer Spitzenkandidaten zu verdanken, als vielmehr einer Entwicklung, die schon im vergangenen Herbst bei den Wahlen in Hessen und Bayern zu beobachten war. Und die sich jetzt noch einmal intensiviert hat.

So wählt jeder Zweite die AfD in Sachsen und Thüringen aus Überzeugung, wie eine Nachwahlbefragung von Infratest Dimap (ARD) zeigt. Will heißen: Die ehemalige Protestpartei AfD hat nun viele Stammwähler.

Dazu passt, was der Fernsehmoderator Jörg Schönenborn im Ersten hervorhebt: In Thüringen liegt die AfD in fünf von neun abgefragten Kompetenzfeldern vor allen anderen Parteien. Sogar bei sozialer Gerechtigkeit trauen viele der Partei am meisten zu. So ist es auch in Sachsen, wo die AfD drei Kompetenzwerte anführt und bei zweien mit der CDU gleichauf liegt.

The party’s recent scandals and the classification of the Thuringian regional association as “certainly right-wing extremist” by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution do not deter convinced voters. Nor do they deter those who continue to vote in protest.

Apparently, the AfD could have celebrated an even greater success if it weren’t for two parties. Firstly, the BSW of party founder Sahra Wagenknecht, which stole a few thousand voters from the AfD in both state elections.

Then there are the Christian Democrats. A little more than half of their voters say they voted “only for the CDU” “so that the AfD doesn’t get too much influence.” The general secretary of the federal CDU, Carsten Linnemann, said after the elections: “We are the bulwark.”

That is the positive interpretation. The negative one is that without the AfD, the CDU would only be half as strong in terms of the number of votes.

For some time now, fewer and fewer citizens have been voting for the CDU out of conviction. In past state elections, the motive was more of a protest against the federal government. The consolidation of this trend must also give Friedrich Merz something to think about. For the federal chairman of the CDU, the state elections in the east are important because the Union wants to take the results into account when deciding who will be the candidate for chancellor in the next federal election.

For the traffic light parties in government at federal level, it was an election day to forget. In any case, the three parties in Saxony and Thuringia have performed worse since reunification than in the old federal states. Now the SPD, Greens and FDP together are only in double figures in Thuringia, and things are hardly any better in Saxony.

For the first time in a long time, the Greens have slipped below the five percent hurdle in a state parliament. The FDP is now only listed as “Other” in the democrats’ bar charts. The SPD also had to fear being thrown out of the state parliaments, but was able to avert this.

As in the European elections, the traffic light parties did not convince very young voters aged 18 to 24. The AfD is clearly ahead in this age group. During the election campaign, the party put a lot of work into the Tiktok platform, which is very popular with young people.

The Left could have been thrown out of a state parliament in Saxony for the first time in an East German election. “The Left has lost the East Germans,” says ARD presenter Schönenborn. According to Infratest Dimap, 74 percent of Saxon voters still feel like second-class citizens as East Germans. The Left could no longer use this to its advantage as it had in the past. The party is only allowed to remain in parliament thanks to winning two direct mandates in Saxony.

In Thuringia, however, the CDU is dependent on the Left Party; with the BSW and SPD alone, it cannot achieve a majority. In order to form a government against the AfD, however, the CDU would have to ignore the incompatibility resolution with the Left Party.

The next state election is scheduled for September 22nd in Brandenburg. Next year, around half a year before the federal election, only Hamburg will vote. Whether migration policy and fear of crime will be the decisive issues in the election, as in Saxony, Thuringia – and previously in Bavaria and Hesse – depends on whether the federal government can present clear successes by then.