Dietmar Woidke could almost single-handedly keep the SPD in power after the Brandenburg election in 2024, but this would involve a high risk.
Potsdam – Dietmar Woidke cannot be overlooked in this election campaign for the 2024 Brandenburg election. It starts with his height, 1.96 meters, which for the Brandenburg SPD symbolizes the outstanding importance of their Prime Minister. “Brandenburg needs size,” they had printed on one of their posters.
The leading candidate is also very present in other ways. He has attended two dozen “straw bale festivals” in the past few weeks, almost all of them in the countryside. Oh yes, and then there is a magazine, produced especially for the election, with a seven-figure circulation. It is called “Woidke”.
Before the 2024 Brandenburg election, top candidate Woidke is bigger than his party SPD
As far as his party is concerned, things are a little more complicated. One of the posters has the telling slogan “If you want Woidke, vote SPD”. Not only does that sound as if the man in Brandenburg is bigger than the party, it probably reflects the current situation. But at least the SPD appears in this picture. In other images, Woidke’s team has avoided any reference to the Social Democrats.
Woidke, 62, a doctor of agricultural engineering, acts as if he wants to keep the SPD in power almost single-handedly. It may be normal for an election campaign to be completely tailored to the leading candidate, but it rarely happens as rigorously as in Brandenburg. This goes so far that Woidke has almost completely dispensed with the Chancellor’s campaign appearances. And this despite the fact that Olaf Scholz lives and has a Bundestag constituency in the state capital Potsdam.
The SPD is not expected to receive any tailwind from the traffic light coalition ahead of the state elections in Brandenburg
The election campaigners in Thuringia and Saxony recently found out that no tailwind can be expected from the traffic light coalition. Woidke’s position is at least more comfortable. The SPD has governed Brandenburg since 1990, and he is only the third state premier after Manfred Stolpe and Matthias Platzeck. He could also remain in the state chancellery beyond election Sunday, as no one wants to form a coalition with the AfD. But he is not making it that easy for himself: if the SPD does not become the strongest force, Woidke will definitely resign.
Polls for the 2024 Brandenburg election see AfD ahead of SPD – Woidke takes a risk
The risk is considerable. The latest polls for the 2024 Brandenburg election put the SPD behind the AfD. However, the gap has recently shrunk noticeably, and Woidke recalls 2019, when the SPD overtook the right-wing party in the final meters. In the end, he believes, the country will trust the proven forces. One poster motif then reads: “If bald, then Woidke.”
No other politician in Brandenburg comes anywhere close to his popularity ratings. Woidke, who grew up on a farm himself, is pragmatic, down-to-earth and down-to-earth. Despite his height of 1.96 m and his doctorate, his oft-quoted eye level is not a cliché.
The people of Brandenburg also give him credit for keeping his distance from nearby Berlin and big politics. He secured significant federal funding for the lignite mining areas in the south of the state, opposed an early exit from coal-fired power generation and, despite environmental concerns, persuaded the electric car giant Tesla to build a “gigafactory”. Woidke’s promise to keep all 66 hospitals in the state is pretty much the opposite of what Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is aiming for.
Scholz in lose-lose situation before Brandenburg election – AfD victory threatened
For the Chancellor, election Sunday, which he will attend at the U.N. in New York, a thankless appointment. Scholz is in a lose-lose situation. If the SPD wins the election, analysts will attribute this to the radical distancing from the federal government. If it ends up behind the AfD, as polls predict, the Chancellor’s position of power will continue to crumble.
Woidke speaks of the “greatest political challenge of my entire life”. Help is coming, if not from Berlin, then at least from an unexpected direction. Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer of the CDU recently wished him victory in the election. Democrats, he argued, must stick together.
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