Author: Peter Kenway

  • Into the unknown: after the election in Sachsen-Anhalt

    (IV)

    As the opinion polls foretold, so it has come to pass: in the election for their new state parliament held on 6 September 2026, voters in Sachsen-Anhalt didn’t just put the AfD first, but have put it so far in front that it is almost able to form a majority state government all on its own; almost, but not quite.

    Had it been able to do so, the keystone of the federal German governing tradition dating back to 1949, that government should mean government by coalition, would have come crashing to the ground.

    Having just failed to do so, a void has opened up. The rule of thumb, that on the road to a new German government, the election itself is only halfway – this still holds. But the terms on which this new government is formed, if at all, and how the political parties get there – this is unknown terrain.

    This post explains how did the AfD do so well, suggests why it did so well, and considers what may happen next. The key point here is: the AfD has secured a huge advantage, but it hasn’t yet won.

    Certainly, the parties of the centre – above all the CDU as the leading force among them in the state – have lost control, leaving the AfD with the freedom to form a coalition with whoever it can persuade to work with it. In the federal governing tradition, there can be no greater electoral prize.

    But whether this is really the prize that the AfD seeks isn’t clear; nor whether the party itself is of one mind on the matter. Having seized the initiative, the AfD now has to start showing its hand.

  • On the brink: the upcoming election in Sachsen-Anhalt

    (III)

    The AfD has already come first in a state parliamentary election, in Thuringia in September 2024. Thanks to the firewall placed around the AfD by the other parties, none would negotiate with it, leaving it languishing in opposition.

    Next-door Sachsen-Anhalt is different. Here, polls put the AfD so far ahead that it may be able to form a majority government all on its own. The rule that an election is but halfway on the road to a new German government could go out of the window on Sunday night.

    Even if it falls short of a majority, the AfD has, in Sahra Wagenknecht’s maverick party, the BSW, the possibility of a negotiating partner who might end up choosing to enable a minority AfD government.

    Whichever, the parties that have dominated the German practice of centrist coalition since the beginning – the CDU, FDP, SPD and Greens – would be reduced to impotent bystanders.

    Yet the greater damage may be done if they are not all bystanders, if the CDU – or at least some of its parliamentarians in Sachsen-Anhalt – decide that secretly voting the AfD into minority government is better than forming a governing coalition in which the second largest party is the far-left Die Linke.

    Drawing on four seemingly similar August opinion polls, alongside comparisons with the last election in the state in 2021, this post, written one week before the election, shows how a wide range of parliamentary outcomes remains possible – except, that is, any variety of the standard, German centrist coalition.

    For in Sachsen-Anhalt, in 2026, the centre is on the brink of losing control.

  • Centrism as it’s supposed to work? Baden-Württemberg’s new coalition

    (II)

    Assuming that all other parties would continue to uphold the firewall around the AfD, the only possible majority coalition government in Baden-Württemberg after the election would be one between the Greens and the CDU.

    Despite doubts about how easy such a negotiation would be, or whether it would even succeed, the new Landtag endorsed the Greens’ Cem Özdemir as Minister-President, in good time, on 13 May. In so doing, it also endorsed the new coalition agreement, for the period 2026 to 2031.

    This post looks at two questions. First, why was a coalition agreement reached – to all appearances – quite so easily in Baden-Württemberg? Second, what kinds of message does the agreement deliver, both generally, and using the chapters on the economy and on justice and migration as examples, specifically too?

    The political salience of these two subjects makes what the agreement has to say about them of wide interest. On the economy, that’s because what Baden-Württemberg is grappling with is not how it economy can catch-up, but how it can stay in front.

    On justice and migration, it’s because this coalition is offering an unambiguously centrist response to what many, not least in the federal government, see as the reason for the strength of support for the AfD.