Germany held three regional elections this month and, although each of them had a unique result, much of the media and political commentary reduced them to: “German chancellor clings to power after latest loss to far right. Since 2016, the year of Brexit and Trump, “embattled mainstream threatened by emboldened far right” has become the overarching narrative about Europe. But while these elections were important, this reductive take both oversimplifies the complexities of contemporary European politics and drives a defeatist “end of democracy” narrative.
Saxony-Anhalt’s election on 6 September was a global news event – understandably, given Germany’s history, economy and place in Europe. The international media had speculated for months about an outright majority for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The party came close, setting a record score with 43.8%, but it has so far failed to form a government, despite the amenable position of the “left-conservative” Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance.
Two weeks later, the AfD came in first again, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with 38.2% of the vote. International media interest was much less pronounced this time, maybe because it was the second of the three ballots, but more likely because the party was not close to reaching a majority. Moreover, the far-right success was overshadowed by the dramatic defeat for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the party did not make it into a state parliament. The relatively modest loss of the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD), on the other hand, was barely discussed.
Finally, in the Berlin state election on the same day, the Left party (Die Linke) scored a stunning victory, gaining almost twice as many new votes as the AfD, which came in only third. Berlin will most likely now be governed by a Left-Greens-SPD coalition, headed by Elif Eralp, the daughter of Turkish political refugees. Perhaps most striking was that a clear majority of young women (54%) voted for the “far-left” party, representing a broader leftwing trend among young women that continues to be ignored by most media and politics representatives.
Whereas the Saxony-Anhalt election was often generalised as the story of Germany, if not Europe as a whole, the Berlin election is, at best, flattened out to a story of capital cities: uniquely cosmopolitan metropoles inhabited by highly educated progressives and immigrants. No matter that Saxony-Anhalt’s population, at 2.1 million, is just slightly over half the size of Berlin’s, and is among the oldest and whitest in the country. Moreover, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a state that is much more like Saxony-Anhalt than like Berlin, will most likely also be governed by a Left-Left-Green government – a striking fact that again has gone largely undiscussed.
This is not to say that the success of the far right and the defeat of the established parties in Germany are not important or alarming, but they are not the only notable features of these elections. Actually, the fact that two of the three states will have leftwing governments is in many ways more newsworthy, given that purely leftwing governments are increasingly rare in Europe. On a similar note, global media attention on Sweden waned as soon as it was clear that the left bloc was likely to succeed in creating a new government and the far-right Sweden Democrats would not enter the government.
Reducing the many complexities of contemporary politics to an “embattled mainstream threatened by emboldened far right” narrative is not only problematic because it ignores significant other developments; notably, important transformations within major cities, where multicultural electorates are moving left rather than right (seen recently in, among others, Copenhagen and New York). But more importantly, and dangerously, it also strengthens the far-right’s populist narrative, which portrays politics as a struggle between “the elite” (that is, all the mainstream parties) and “the people” (allegedly represented by the far right).
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Similarly, some media have been keen to adopt the “horseshoe” theory of politics, prominently and strategically used by Merz, in which the liberal-democratic mainstream is squeezed from both sides, by the far right and far left. This conflates two very different challenges though. While it is true that established parties are challenged by new(er) parties, particularly because younger voters vote less for the established right and left, this includes liberal democratic parties like the Greens, too.
Moreover, while the far right does threaten liberal democracy – and the AfD even threatens democracy per se – the so-called far left rarely does. Like Die Linke, most parties that are considered “far left” are former communist parties which have become significantly more moderate over time, presenting an ideology that reflects the social democracy of the 1970s much more than the revolutionary socialism of the former communist world. In fact, few “far left” parties are still even populist these days.
So, while both the far right and “far left” threaten the established parties, only the far right threatens liberal democracy. It makes political sense for established politicians such as Merz to equate liberal democracy with the established parties, but the media should not uncritically share these claims. Surveys continue to show evidence of what the US political scientist Robert Dahl termed “a democratic paradox”: where very high support for the system of democracy is combined with very high dissatisfaction with the state of real, existing democracy.
By highlighting the complexities of contemporary politics, in particular the frustration of the young (women) who are looking for liberal democratic alternatives to established parties, both the far-right populist binary of “establishment versus far right” and the defeatist “end of democracy” narrative are weakened. Hopefully this will give space to liberal democratic parties, old and new, to move beyond the self-defeating strategy of catering again and again to the same stereotypical voter with “legitimate concerns”, and instead mobilise and represent different groups of dissatisfied democrats.
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Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today
