Schulze puts Saxony-Anhalt’s post-election maths on the table

Before a single ballot has been counted in Saxony-Anhalt, the arguments over the aftermath are already louder than the campaign itself. Sven Schulze, the state’s Minister President and a CDU politician, says he believes the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht could join forces with the AfD after the election on 6 September if the opportunity presents itself. That is the sort of pre-emptive arithmetic German politics loves: first declare your red lines, then spend the rest of the campaign explaining why they are still red, just flexible enough to survive contact with the numbers.

Schulze laid out his case in remarks to the Funke Mediengruppe. In his view, both Alice Weidel, the AfD’s federal leader, and Sahra Wagenknecht are primarily pursuing national ambitions and are using Saxony-Anhalt as a platform for them. He said he did not want the state to be governed by Weidel from Switzerland and Wagenknecht from Saarland. He also called the AfD’s top candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, a puppet of Alice Weidel. The accusation is blunt, but it also reveals the mood of the campaign: less local programme, more suspicion about who is pulling the strings.

The BSW is not exactly clearing the air. Its state chair and lead candidate, Claudia Wittig, has spoken more cautiously about possible cooperation after the vote, including with the AfD. She said there are projects that can be started with the AfD, but ruled out backing Siegmund for minister president with BSW votes. That position leaves the party in a familiar political twilight zone: open enough to keep options alive, careful enough to deny any enthusiasm when the cameras are on.

Schulze also avoided a clear answer when asked about his own party’s firewall to the AfD. He said he was not conducting that debate and that his focus was on a government capable of governing Saxony-Anhalt sensibly. Before the election, he added, he was not concerned with what happens afterwards; that, he said, would come once the voters had decided. It is a tidy line, though voters may wonder why the post-election future is always treated like an inconvenient parcel that can be left unopened until later.

The reason for all this nervousness is not hard to find. Recent polling puts the AfD at around 40 percent, comfortably ahead of the field. That makes the election less a contest over who wins and more a contest over who must eventually talk to whom. Saxony-Anhalt votes on 6 September, and the campaign is already behaving as if the result were merely the opening bid in a longer negotiation.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com