The Lower Saxony election evening knows two winners: the incumbent social democratic head of government, Stefan Weil. And: the AfD. This is very worrying – and also concerns the SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Lower Saxony re-elects its Social Democratic Prime Minister, who has been in power for two electoral periods. A “keep it up” then. But this election result carries a stark warning: if the mainstream parties fail to solve the issues that matter most to the people, the radicals will benefit.
The AfD was able to almost double its election result. And that despite the fact that the Lower Saxony state association was divided like no other and poisonous conflicts over the direction were the order of the day here. It didn’t matter – the many voters who were dissatisfied with the performance of the Berlin traffic light government used this state election to protest against Berlin’s politics.
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The AfD repeatedly exploited the weaknesses of the traffic light government, especially those of the social democratic chancellor. Apart from big announcements, there is still no coherent concept from Berlin as to how the traffic light government wants to react to people’s concerns and (existential) fears.
As a reminder, trust in all established parties to solve the country’s pressing problems has seldom been as low as it is today. And doubts about democracy have hardly ever been as great as they are today. A pronounced government deficit is responsible for this.
No political field makes this clearer than the debate about the expensive country Germany. Fears of social decline have long since reached the middle class, and are particularly prevalent among those who are just struggling to make ends meet. The federal government could not allay their fears of slipping into poverty, quite the opposite.
The AfD targeted and, as always, made loud noise against Ukraine and the Ukrainians, including the many refugees who are looking for safety in Germany. In doing so, they gave an audible voice to widespread concerns about the consequences of the war in Ukraine, both military and social.
And that’s why the high election result of the AfD can also be read as a call for help to those in government to do their job, which includes finding the right language and address for those who believe they are in ever greater need. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has a tendency to talk relatively technocratically over people’s heads.
However, the truth is that the Union must also ask itself why it was unable to prevent the AfD from achieving this success. Because that was exactly the claim with which the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz once started – to halve the AfD. Now it has almost doubled in Lower Saxony and one can only hope that the Union will ask itself why that is.
Peace on the AfD front is not to be expected in the future either. Because a topic that has already made the AfD strong has long been looming: the refugee crisis. Germany’s local authorities are already warning of a repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis – and rightly so, if you look at the numbers alone. And if the federal government does not succeed in preventing a new “2015”, only one party will be really happy – the AfD.
It is not enough to simply appeal to voters to vote democratically. The only way to prevent such electoral successes by the right-wing extremists as this Sunday is to govern decently. In this respect, this election evening in Lower Saxony contains an urgent recommendation for action for Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The electoral success of the far right also affects the left.
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