The Landtag election on 6 September resulted in the far-right AfD winning most seats but falling short of a majority. Their victory has been quite erroneously attributed by some to the voting system used – proportional representation (PR).
An examination of the detailed election results (obtainable on Wikipedia via the Statistisches Landesamt Sachsen-Anhalt) disproves this theory. Sachsen-Anhalt uses PR but with a 5% bar which means that parties receiving less than 5% of the votes are denied representation.
This 5% threshold was originally introduced to make life harder for extremist parties and, some would argue, is anti-democratic. The crucial point here is that the AfD won 43.8% of the votes which gave it 39 seats; however, if the 5% bar had not been in place and full PR had been used it would have won two seats fewer (37) and the FDP would have secured representation.
To win a majority of seats a party required 42 seats, so the AfD would have fallen short with or without the bar.
Bad vs really bad
Let us look at the last general election in the UK when Labour won 33.7% of the votes but a ludicrous 63.2% of the seats (411 seats). We can only speculate on what the outcome might have been in Sachsen-Anhalt if First Past The Post (FPTP) had been used. One (rather hit and miss) method used by psephologists is the cube law approach. Take parties A, B and C and compare their vote shares in the sequence A3 : B3: C3. This will give a rough and ready guide to the number of seats each party wins.
This approach is not infallible as it fails to take account of areas where party strength is concentrated (e.g. Plaid Cymru). Nevertheless, if we apply the cube law to Sachsen-Anhalt, the AfD might have won 76 seats, the CDU 5 and the SPD and Greens 1 each. In other words, if PR had not been used in Sachsen-Anhalt the result would have been not simply bad but catastrophically bad.
Alliance formation
As it is, the AfD is 3 seats short of a majority. The mainstream parties (CDU, SPD, Greens and Linke) have ruled out any form of co-operation, let alone collaboration with the AfD. However, the BSW (Sarah Wagenknecht alliance) has stated that Ulrich Siegmund, the leader of the AfD, is entitled to become chief minister. The BSW is a left-wing breakaway from die Linke, itself a left-wing breakaway from the SPD.
However, if we see the relationship between far-left parties and far right parties, not in terms of a straight line but as a horseshoe, we cannot be totally surprised by the parity between some of Ms Wagenknecht’s policy positions and the AfDs, for example, their shared preference for cracking down hard on immigration and for ending arms to Ukraine.
The new chief minister will be voted into office by the newly convened Landtag. If there is no winner on the first or second ballot, the third ballot is final. Some commentators assume that, at the third ballot, a few of the more conservative-minded members of the CDU will swing towards the AfD, and Wagenknecht has said the BSW will abstain on the third round.
Siegmund has ruled out running a minority administration. So, perhaps it will be a deadlock. This could be resolved by holding another election, but it would require the support of two-thirds of the MPs and the mainstream parties must surely recognise that another election would be in the interests of the AfD.
Public attitudes to the AfD
On 7 September, Tageschau, the news programme of ARD (the functional equivalent of BBC1) reported the results of a survey of what AFD voters think about the AfD. 97% believe the AfD understands better than other parties that people don’t feel safe and, coupled with this, 96% are encouraged by the fact that the AfD wants to significantly reduce the number of immigrants and refugees; 92% support the AfD’s wish to reduce arms supplies to Ukraine and 87% believe that the AfD is a centrist, rather than extremist party. Well, they would, wouldn’t they. The parallels with Reform are obvious, alarming and unsurprising. The AfD is anti-immigrant and, in effect, pro-Putin.
PR has not caused a surge in support for the far right, but has contained it as far as possible. FPTP would not be able to do this. Opponents of PR need to understand that if party X performs better than your party this is because your party has failed to understand the needs of the electorate.
Ramifications
The reunification of Germany has taken the form of inner imperialism, as excellently portrayed by Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk in his Die Űberrnahme: Wie Ostdeutschland Teil der Bundesrepublik wurde (The takeover: how East Germany became part of the Federal Republic). The standard of living in the eastern Länder still lags behind the West after 35 years and the people feel exploited by their own compatriots. So it is hardly surprising that, in their despair, they turn to snake oil salesmen.
It remains to be seen what impact the result in Sachsen-Anhalt will have in neighbouring Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin.The latest opinion poll (on 3 September, before the Sachsen-Anhalt election) showed the AfD on 35%, the SPD on 32% the Linke on 11%, and the other parties on a negligible score in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In Berlin the AfD is currently on 17%.The question is whether voters in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will be encouraged or horrified by the result in their neighbouring Land. Their election is on 20 September, 2026. So, we won’t have long to find out.
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