Choice | Berlin is not Saxony-Anhalt

Berlin's AfD top candidate Kristin Brinker (l.) on Sunday at the AfD election party in Magdeburg, ex-President for the Protection of the Constitution Hans-Georg Maaßen was also there. Photo: dpa/Sebastian Gollnow »The AfD is the future! We will continue to give full steam until the election on September 20th in Berlin. This is how Kristin Brinker, AfD's top candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives election, reacted on Monday to the 43.8 percent of the votes that her party was able to achieve in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday.

“We will rule Berlin one day, perhaps as early as September 21st,” predicts AfD member of the Bundestag Beatrix von Storch. But it won't happen that quickly. Your party is only at 17 to 19 percent in the polls for the House of Representatives election.

“Saxony-Anhalt is not Berlin,” says CDU General Secretary Lukas Krieger. He emphasizes: “The AfD stands against everything that defines our metropolis and holds it together. There can, must and will never be any collaboration with this party.” But Krieger is using the shock in Magdeburg to stir up sentiment against the left. "Saxony-Anhalt shows very clearly what will be at stake in Berlin in two weeks, given the rise of radical parties," he says. It is important to “keep the radicalized left,” which is riddled with anti-Semitism, contempt for humanity, glorification of violence and hatred of police officers, “from power.” Berlin needs a stable and effective Senate and, in Krieger's opinion, it needs a strong CDU.

“I know that many people in Berlin are afraid today,” says left-wing leading candidate Elif Eralp, commenting on what she calls the “historic break” in Saxony-Anhalt. »But I want to tell them all: you are not alone. I stand for a Berlin in which all people can lead an affordable and safe life in dignity, regardless of where they come from. I want to make the capital a place of hope and solidarity. I am the answer to Saxony-Anhalt.«

Green Party lead candidate Werner Graf describes his own party as the “countermodel” to the AfD. He claims: "The people in Saxony-Anhalt felt this and therefore ensured the historically best election result in the country." But what Werner Graf, who was born in Upper Palatinate, did not seem to have understood on Sunday during his visit to Magdeburg, Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz, who was born and raised in East Berlin, knew immediately. Sziborra-Seidlitz was the top candidate of the Greens in Saxony-Anhalt and noted right at the beginning of her first reaction on election evening that the Greens owe their entry into the state parliament to civil society. That was a veiled admission that, just like with the SPD, it wouldn't have worked without borrowed votes from tactically voting supporters of the Left.

»I want to make the capital a place of hope and solidarity. I am the answer to Saxony-Anhalt.«

“The BSW is back!” Berlin BSW state chairman Alexander King rejoiced again on Monday after his party made it into the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt with 5.3 percent. He wants to take this tailwind with him into the last two weeks of the election campaign in Berlin. “The media and survey institutes didn’t believe we could do that and had already written off the BSW,” recalls King. But it was still successful. “We also have good chances here in Berlin,” thinks the politician. The mood for change will have an impact on the capital. King is certain that the CDU is heavily overrated in the opinion polls for the House of Representatives election at around 20 percent and the BSW is underrated at three to four percent. Saxony-Anhalt has shown that one should not be fooled by survey results. »There, too, we were between three and four percent in the polls shortly before the election. It has become 5.3 percent. And that’s how it will be in Berlin,” predicts King. Whether it is a conscious attempt to discourage the BSW voters or whether the pollsters have measurement problems with a new party - what is certain is that "every vote counts for the BSW and will be counted in the end."

In the most recent survey, the SPD and Greens in Berlin each had 15 percent, the Left at 19 and the FDP at 3.

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