In Eastern Germany, the Glass Is Half Full

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- There are two ways to look at the results of Sunday’s elections in two eastern German states. One is to focus with alarm on the success of the nationalist, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which came second in both Saxony and Brandenburg. The other is to point out that the governing centrist parties came first in both states. I’m with the optimists: The centrists’ victory is both a tactical and a strategic success on which they can build.

These ex-Communist states are an important battleground. The Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democrats, the two major parties that have ruled Germany since reunification 29 years ago, have failed to eliminate the east-west prosperity gap. When Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks of the whole country doing well after unification, she strikes only a discordant note with left-behind voters in the east. For them, the AfD’s election slogan, “The East Rises Up,” sounds more relevant.

In previous years, the eastern protest vote went to Die Linke, the radical left political force with roots in East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity party. Now, it has clearly switched to the AfD -- but on Sunday the party failed to reach Die Linke’s earlier highs in Brandenburg.

In the traditionally more nationalist Saxony, the AfD did better than Die Linke had ever done – in part at the expense of the leftist party. That’s a sign some voters were switching radical flanks simply to express their discontent with the complacency of the establishment.

Despite the strong protest vote, now largely consolidated by the AfD, the parties that have governed the two states for almost three decades have eked out narrow wins.

For Brandenburg Minister President Dietmar Woidtke, who leads the SPD in the state, this is a major success: The party has been rudderless as a national force for months, bereft of strong leadership and locked into a joyless governing coalition with Merkel’s CDU. Polls indicated he easily could have lost to the AfD. But Woidtke fought the election like a wrestling match, launching an unusual personal attack on the AfD’s lead candidate. That showed the center-left party can still compete if it runs on its strong record in government and doesn’t shy away from fighting rhetoric.

CDU Minister President Michael Kretschmer’s relatively narrow victory in Saxony was expected, but it’s a decent result both for him and for the party leader, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Had the CDU won less than 30% of the vote, her leadership would have been in question. As it is, she looks to be holding on to the support of the party’s conservative base, which Kretschmer represents, but the CDU is still bleeding support to the AfD and, on its liberal flank, to the Greens. 

Both Woidtke and Kretschmer will probably have to broaden the governing coalitions in their states, likely adding the Greens, which have never performed well in the east but are riding a nationwide wave of increased support. That, however, isn’t necessarily a reflection of the center’s weakness but rather of German voters’ growing environmental awareness.

Strategically, the SPD and CDU victories mean the country’s governing coalition will likely survive. That gives both parties time to rebuild their strength before the 2021 election. In the remaining two years, they will be able to help their cause by showing greater generosity to voters: Almost certainly, there will be more spending and investment to overcome the economic slowdown triggered by President Donald Trump’s trade wars. In the east in particular, tens of billions of euros have been earmarked to aid the transition from coal to greener energy sources.

At the same time, both the CDU and the SPD need to do more to win the support of younger voters. Exit polls in Brandenburg and Saxony on Sunday showed that voters over the age of 60 were key to their victories. The AfD’s protest electorate comes from younger age groups, and if the establishment parties fail to woo them more effectively, they will face a greater threat down the road.

It’s obvious from the exit polls that continuing problems with the integration of the 1.5 million mostly Muslim immigrants who entered Germany during the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016 are feeding the AfD’s popularity. Voters consider it more competent than the government parties in immigration policy. Many migrants are still struggling with the German language, and the government has failed to provide them with a clear path to the job market. At the same time, the support they get from the state is unpopular with east Germans, who feel they are getting less attention than the newcomers.

The government’s failure to speed up the migrants’ inclusion in society is a long-term drag on the centrist parties’ popularity; the two need to realize that a bigger investment in training, coupled with more political will to expel those who fail to integrate, are important to their political destiny.

Both the CDU and the SPD have enough intellectual resources and political savvy to build on their narrow victories, now that it’s clear they can no longer take their place at the top for granted, in the east or elsewhere. The Merkel era has exhausted the center’s capacity for business as usual, and the Brandenburg and Saxony votes are more evidence of that.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

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