AfD Bogeyman Finishes Second in Saxony and Brandenburg

Yesterday elections were held in two states of the former East Germany, Saxony and Brandenburg (see "German Far Right Makes Election Gains, but Falls Short of Victory" by Melissa Eddy and Katrin Bennhold). Predictions were rife in the mainstream press of victory for Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. It didn't turn out that way. In Saxony, Angel Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) came out on top with 32% of the vote, compared to AfD's 27%. In Brandenburg, the CDU's GroKo partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), won with 26%, compared to AfD's 24%. The AfD saw its vote increase by 18% in Saxony and 12% in Brandenburg from the last election in 2014. 

All in all an impressive performance if short of outright victory. The other parties refuse to govern in coalition with AfD. So long as this shunning holds, AfD will have to win significantly more votes before it can implement its unremarkable policy prescriptions.

In Saxony and Brandenburg, the AfD campaigned on the broken promises of economic development of East Germany post-reunification. Katrin Bennhold published a story on Saturday (see "German Elections Reveal, and Deepen, a New East-West Divide") which chronicled her visit to Forst, "a once prosperous textile hub on the Polish border that lost thousands of jobs and half its population after the fall of the Berlin Wall."

Bennhold interviewed a number of Forst residents soured on the false promises of capitalism:

“There is a sense that things are decided over your head, that you have no say in anything,” said Diana Sonntag, a restaurant owner and mother of six.

“We in the East are familiar with that,” she said. “We’ve been there before.”

Under Communism, the party called the shots, she said. Now the market does. “I’ve come to realize that everything they taught us about capitalism all those years ago is true,” Ms. Sonntag said. “Politics is just for show. Money rules.”

One would be hard-pressed to find a more succinctly accurate description of electoral democracy in the Western world.