The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has clearly won the last regional elections prior to the legislative elections on September 26 in Germany. The victory of the CDU in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt was vital and not only because these elections, irrelevant if it had not been for the fact that they were the last before the big autumn event, were the baptism of the new CDU president and candidate to the Foreign Ministry Armin Laschet. Saxony-Anhalt is the Land where the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has had its best harvests and the population's fatigue with the pandemic restrictions raised fears of a rebound in this formation.

Two points separated the CDU from the AfD on the eve of the vote and 14 have remained at the close of the polls in an election that will go down in history for having registered the worst participation rate since the Unification of Germany in 1990. It has been 45% compared to 61% then.

The brake placed by the CDU on the AfD has been notorious. Four years ago, the CDU won 29.8% of the vote, compared to 24.3% for the AfD. This Sunday, the CDU won 36% of the votes and the AfD with 22.5%. The pulse that maintained the right and the ultra-right in the federal state with the least identity in all of Germany and possibly less representative of the country is thus broken in favor of the CDU. There is a historical explanation. Saxony-Anhalt was dissolved as a state by the communist regime of the GDR and its territory divided among the neighboring states. Saxony-Anhalt regained its status, not all of its districts, after the unification of Germany.

The identity as Land, erased by decades of communist dictatorship and the search for belonging through German nationalism preached by the AfD, explains to a large extent the fertility of that party in the East of the country and in this case in Saxony-Anhalt.. AfD erupted as a protest party against Chancellor Merkel's open-door policy towards refugees, a confrontation strategy with xenophobic tendencies that, with the coronavirus crisis, has been transformed into a protest against the reduction of rights.

A parallel analysis can be made with Die Linke (the Left), a party formed on the ruins of the Communist Party. Non-existent in the West of the country, Die Linke home to those nostalgic and disappointed with capitalism, has managed to retain third place in Saxony-Anhalt with 11% of the votes. It loses, however, 5.3 points compared to 2016.

In the words of the CDU commissioner for Eastern Affairs, Marco Wanderwizt, “many East Germans who still do not enter democracy” weigh “a dictatorial socialization”, a comment that has generated great controversy. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in the extinct GDR, has condemned these statements.

And yet, the CDU campaign in Saxony-Anhalt has been a reflection of the peculiar reality of a broken, recomposed, deindustrialized Land, home to an important cultural heritage, motor of the Bauhaus movement, center of photovoltaic production, depopulated and, Despite the important projects financed here by the European Union, poor.

In open competition with the AfD, the leader of that formation and minister president, Reiner Haseloff, has sought the support of the most right-wing party figures, those who, like Friedrich Merz, could better fish in their fishing grounds.. Haseloff, out of conviction or out of convenience, was one of the “barons” who, given a choice between the centrist Laschet or the right-wing Markus Söder as the conservative bloc's candidate for Chancellorship, publicly opted for his Bavarian colleague.. The CDU's reading of these elections will necessarily be in a national key and that means interpreting the victory in Saxony-Anhalt as a “boost” for the candidate Laschet.

The socialists, frozen

So will the Greens. For his candidate for Foreign Ministry, Annalena Baerbock, these elections have also been the first since her nomination. In the 2016 elections, the ecologies entered the regional parliament with a scraping 5.2%. Now they have achieved 6.5%. It is a result that, however, does not support the green tide that could make Baerbock the next chancellor of Germany.. Looking ahead to the September elections, polls give the Greens 22%, two percentage points behind the CDU-CSU.

The Social Democrats (SPD), with 10.6% in the 2016 elections, have risen to 8.5%, a result that neither pricks nor cuts for the candidate for Chancellery, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. The SPD has frozen in the polls, even when Scholz is the only one of all those who concur with the most government experience, both at the regional and federal levels. The polls predict for the SPD between 16-17% of the vote.

The only bell in those elections has been given by the liberals of the FDP, who return for the first time in the regional parliament since their departure in 1994. The FDP, which is also advancing at the national level, has achieved, like the Greens, 6.5% of the vote, thereby giving a roulette blow to future negotiations for the formation of the Government. And in this, Saxony-Anhalt has shown more creativity than any other Land. there is only one veto. No party will agree with AfD.