Brandenburg Coalition Falls: AfD Calls for New Elections After Government Crisis

The ruling coalition in Germany's eastern state of Brandenburg lost its majority on Tuesday, sparking calls from the far-right AfD for new elections. Centre-left SPD state premier Dietmar Woidke said he would run a minority government for now and seek talks on a new alliance with the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

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The crisis was sparked when Woidke ended a year-old coalition with the BSW, a far-left Moscow-friendly party, citing "constant disagreements" within the junior coalition partner. The bickering led the state finance minister Robert Crumbach and two other lawmakers to quit the BSW, with Crumbach accusing some within the party of wanting to "be opposition politicians within government".

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The BSW accused the three of "a betrayal of voters". The CDU's state leader Jan Redmann said it was open to talks with the SPD, stressing the need for "stability and reliability in politics" in the region that surrounds the capital Berlin. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) meanwhile seized on the news and demanded new elections, hoping for further gains in its ex-communist eastern heartland.

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"The government chaos in Brandenburg can have only one logical outcome: immediate snap elections!" wrote the AfD's national co-leader Alice Weidel on X. In the last Brandenburg election in September 2024, the AfD came a close second to the SPD, but more recent polls give it a clear lead there. The anti-immigration AfD won a state election for the first time last year in Thuringia and hopes for strong gains this year in polls in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

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But it has never been part of any German government due to the "firewall" all other parties have maintained against the far right. The BSW was founded by veteran left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht in 2024 as an offshoot of the Die Linke party. It maintains left-leaning economic policies but takes a more conservative stance on immigration and other social issues while often echoing Russian positions.

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At last year's federal general election it narrowly missed the five percent threshold needed to re-enter parliament. Wagenknecht announced her resignation as BSW leader in November.

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