Brandenburg election: Campaigns and a concert on eve of vote

Campaigning was rather sparse in the eastern German state of Brandenburg on Saturday, a day ahead of elections to the region's parliament, with many of the parties having formally wound down their activities. 

Of the major parties, only the Christian Democrats (CDU) staged a formal political campaign event on Saturday, although a large concert in the state capital Potsdam, not far from Berlin, also had a distinctly political flavor. 

SPD state Premier Woidke surveys flood defenses

The current state premier, Dietmar Woidke of the Social Democratic Party, spent the day surveying flood defenses and meeting with firefighters amid the anticipated arrival of floodwaters from cental Europe flowing downstream toward eastern Germany.

He toured Frankfurt an der Oder, not to be confused with Germany's financial capital far to the west on the Main River, as officials try to shore up the Oder's banks to reduce the risk of flooding.

Woidke's SPD was the strongest party in the state at the last vote in 2019, and currently governs with the CDU. But, while polls do point to a close race, they also suggest that the SPD could risk losing its place as the largest party to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Sunday. 

This follows the AfD becoming the largest party in Thuringia, and coming a close second in Saxony a few weeks ago when two other states in the former Communist East Germany went to the polls.

Woidke said he, of course, hoped for a strong showing from his party on Sunday. 

"But above all things, I hope that we get a signal that the state of Brandenburg continues to stand for openness to the world, freedom and democracy," Woidke said.

CDU leader Merz visits Potsdam

Only the Christian Democrats held a formal campaign event on Saturday in the state, with national party leader Friedrich Merz — recently confirmed as the CDU's intended candidate for chancellor next year — appearing alongside the party's top politician in the state, Jan Redmann.

The CDU is currently polling a fairly distant third, on roughly half the support of both the SPD and AfD, but Merz tried appealing to more moderate right-wing voters to change their allegiance. He said much divides his party from the AfD. 

"[The AfD] goes against everything that makes up the heart and soul of our party," Merz said. "Yes, we want to reduce the numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers, but we don't do that with xenophobic undertones." 

He said he considered the CDU to be patriotic, but not nationalistic, saying: "The difference between patriots ... and nationalists is quite simple: We love our country. Nationalists hate all the others." 

The other major parties in the running had either concluded their formal campaigning on Friday.

Potsdam concert opposing 'shift to the right' 

Still, there was a distinct political feeling in Potsdam on Saturday as several German bands and musicians staged a concert with a motto that loosely translates to: "Stay stable — against the AfD and a jerk to the right."

The campaign's other slogan, albeit not one it elected to put on the stage on Saturday, could translate as "no truck with Nazis."

The event included performances from German bands, including Madsen and Sportfreunde Stiller.

Constitutional Court dashes animal rights party's hopes of TV time

Meanwhile, far to the southwest in Karlsruhe, a minor German political party suffered defeat in an injunction to Germany's highest court, seeking more recognition on public broadcaster Radio Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) when the results are announced on Sunday evening. 

Typically, only parties that win more than 5% of the vote in state elections (the minimum threshold to guarantee representation in parliament) — and possibly also parties that are represented in the federal parliament (and therefore could be deemed nationally relevant) but that might have missed the 5% mark in a given state — tend to be guaranteed an explicit mention. 

The remaining share of the vote, split among smaller parties, is often simply labeled as "other parties."

Germany's Tierschutzpartei, known in English as the Animal Protection Party, argued winning more than 2% should be sufficient to warrant an explicit mention in the main regional television reporting. It also pointed out that several nationally represented parties, including the Left Party, the Greens and the FDP, appeared at risk of falling short of 5% on Sunday but would likely nevertheless be mentioned.

The Constitutional Court ruled that enforcing this would risk political influence on the press' freedom to make its own editorial decisions and was therefore not acceptable. 

msh/sms (AFP, dpa, epd) 

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