The Greens in Saxony-Anhalt have long been convinced that struggle and originality can be worthwhile. Your top candidate Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz, a nurse, mother of three, Protestant, had already attracted attention and interest with a lively speech at the federal party conference last fall. Already then, the first volunteers came forward to support the structurally weak regional association with barely 1,700 members in its election campaign. At that time, the Greens were stable in polls at around three percent.
The result: For the first time since a seemingly endless series of losses in parliamentary elections since 2023, the Greens in Saxony-Anhalt have now managed to significantly improve their share of the vote, from 5.9 to 8.9 percent. This was thanks to the committed election campaign of top woman Sziborra-Seidlitz, but also to more than a thousand helpers, from students to pensioners, from Brandenburg to Bavaria, who came to distribute flyers or take part in discussions at the voting booths. Even the Bundestag faction ended its closed session early last Friday with the slogan: off to the last hour election campaign in Saxony-Anhalt!
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The federal party initially hesitated – and then went “all in”
The federal party, initially somewhat hesitant, said it invested more than ever before in a state election campaign. Federal chairman Felix Banaszak essentially became a top sponsor and traveled all over the country for weeks, while his co-chair Franziska Brantner concentrated on northern Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, but also attended numerous appointments in Saxony-Anhalt. Banaszak attracted attention with his taxi campaign, in which he chauffeured interested citizens around the area and talked to them in front of the running social media camera about issues, but also about moods and hopes, for example with the young teacher training student Pauline. From Berlin's perspective, one of the successes of the Greens is that they were able to have discussions again during the election campaign without being verbally or even physically attacked. This also happened - for example when Banaszak was harassed in Wernigerode - but it remained such an exception that police and personal protection could largely be dispensed with.
Confrontational attempts by right-wing extremist media such as Compact TV to show them have probably benefited the Greens. Banaszak, quick-witted and aggressive, was able to win scenic points here. Just as the Greens managed to some extent to create a kind of duel situation between them and the AfD. The Greens, it is claimed, would be the force to deny the AfD an absolute majority. In no group of voters did this happen as well as previous non-voters and former CDU voters. Even if two thirds of voters think that the Greens are overdoing it when it comes to environmental and climate protection, 86 percent of their voters thought that they should be elected because “democracy and the rule of law are in danger.” According to Infratest dimap, more than two thirds said they would vote for the party primarily “to prevent an AfD prime minister”.
The Left is falling, the SPD is taking a small step forward
The Left also tried to improve its result from 2021 with intensive door-to-door election campaigning. The party and its top candidate Eva von Angeren failed to achieve this. It fell to a historic low of 8.6 percent on Sunday, ten years ago it was 24.1 and in 2021 it was at least 11 percent. Mustafa Groener won one of three direct left-wing mandates in Magdeburg II with 29.4 percent, but fell far behind the Greens in the second votes (12.6 percent). In Hall III, the Left also won a direct mandate, Jannik-Loris Balint with almost 40 percent, but 33 percent of the second votes went to the Greens, a significant increase. The Left stagnated in the university town at 13.8 percent. The Left lost a particularly large number of votes to the BSW, namely 15,000 in total.
The SPD, in turn, the third left-wing party, was able to improve its meager previous result slightly by 0.9 percentage points to 9.3, but neither won a direct mandate nor scored particularly well anywhere. In his own constituency of Wernigerode, top candidate Armin Willigmann won at least 20.5 percent, but remained without a direct mandate, which also went to the AfD there. Not even in the state capital Magdeburg did the SPD get more than 14 percent. Since its heyday with Prime Minister Reinhard Höppner at the end of the 1990s, the party has lost almost three quarters of its voters.
