"Have you seen," asks the young head of the pet shop near the train station in Luckenwalde, "how many foreigners have come here in the last ten minutes?" A woman with a headscarf. Two men with black beards. A pregnant woman with dark skin. "There were seven."
The young man silently counted during the conversation in front of his business. Actually, it was about the question of why the Left has done so poorly in the state election in Brandenburg. The answer is about the strength of the AfD: the foreigners, the dealer is sure, are the most important reason why so many people in the area voted for the right-wing populists instead of for other parties.
"I'm not a Nazi," he says, "but I see every day what's going on here." He himself is fine. But he was sorry for German grannies, who could hardly pay the cockroach spray for 9.99 euros, while foreigners came with purses full of bills in his shop.
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Election in Brandenburg: searching for traces in LuckenwaldeHe already knows that he does not want to send his children to school in Luckenwalde because those who speak German well would be in the minority there. "In ten years, that will fly right around our ears."
The zoo business is located in Käthe-Kollwitz-Straße. It is the fastest way for pedestrians who want to get from the station to the Aliens Office and Social Welfare Office, which is responsible for the entire district. As a result, significantly more migrants walk here every day than in most other streets of the tranquil town.
In total, seven percent of the inhabitants of Luckenwalde have a foreign citizenship. From the perceived truth that it must be much more, the AfD benefits. Does her strength have anything to do with the weakness of the Left Party?
For many years, the Left had the claim to be the voice of the East, as the party of the Poor, as a protest party. In 2009, more than 27 percent were taken in Brandenburg. Ten years later, there are only just over ten - a minus of 7.9 points. In several electoral districts of Brandenburg, it was for the left even by ten percentage points or more down, even in Teltow-Fläming II, where Luckenwalde lies. The Left Party, once so strong in the East, is now only one among many.
Is the AfD the new East Party?
Of a "disaster" speaks therefore left parliamentary leader Dietmar Bartsch. His co-boss Sahra Wagenknecht sees her party in the co-responsibility for the success of the AfD. The left was "for many years the voice of the discontented". "By alienating ourselves from our former constituents, we made it easy for the AfD," she told the editorial network Germany. Left-wing veteran Gregor Gysi stated at "Zeit online", the left is no longer the protest party: "Those who want to meet the established because they are so dissatisfied with the situation, therefore choose AfD."
Has the AfD outstripped the rank in the east of the left? "The AfD has taken on the role of the left as a protest party," the party researcher Tom Thieme is sure. His colleague Hans Vorländer says: "The left has lost because it has the image of an established party, and because the AfD has bought her the cutting as a supposed representative of East German interests."
Of course, the losses of the left on the one hand can not be explained one-dimensionally with an emigration of their voters to the AfD. The right-wing populists are gaining votes from all camps, especially non-voters. How many of them used to vote for the left can not be said.
Electoral migration from left to right
In fact, the left from election to election continuously loses votes to the right wing. In Brandenburg, according to Voter Analysis by Infratest dimap, 12,000 were in this election. In Saxony, where the left was similarly poor, it was 27,000 compared to the last election - that's more than the party had to give to the Greens or the SPD. In the European elections, 100,000 voters nationwide migrated from the very left to the far right.
Heike Klovert / SPIEGEL ONLINE
Downtown Luckenwalde
Searching for clues in Luckenwalde: Steffen Rau, in his mid-40s and engine inspector by profession, is running across the Luckenwalder shopping promenade this Monday afternoon in a pair of blue workers dungarees that his name is embroidered on. Maybe he would have voted for the left, he says - if the AfD had not been. So he chose the SPD, so that at least the AfD has something to oppose. The bill went up.
In front of the snack bar next door, a pensioner eats fries with schnitzel under a parasol. Udo Plauschinat, 67, did not vote for the left. They do not do enough to preserve the social market economy and education - "and no one deals with the issue of pension taxation, which is why 90-year-olds sit at the computer to make tax returns - what a nonsense."
"Not the topics that people wanted to hear"
Tactics or content? Felix Thier is still trying to understand the electoral defeat for his party. The 33-year-old district association chairman of the Left has brought a few sheets of paper to talk. It says that 135,500 people in Brandenburg voted for the Left Party - 47,600 less than five years ago. He has also printed out the numbers of voter migrations.
Heike Klovert / SPIEGEL ONLINE
Felix Thier
"We set the right topics, but they may not have been the topics that people wanted to hear," says Thier.
From the evaluation, which is in front of him on the table, shows: Almost six out of ten Brandenburgers are worried that crime could increase massively. Nearly every second fears a loss of German language and culture.
The topics that most concern people in Brandenburg are: medical care, the police presence, public transport. Two of these three points have also addressed his party in the election campaign, Thier says. The demand for more police officers was not among them.
Falling unemployment figures, few foreigners
The district is located in the bacon belt of Berlin. In the capital you can commute by train in three quarters of an hour. The number of unemployed in Luckenwalde has been falling for years, and the proportion of foreigners is comparatively low.
Felix Thier does not understand why so many citizens jealously turned aside, on asylum seekers who do not have it easy. "Guys, why do not you look up to where the wealth is?" But those who made big profits on the stock market were rarely in Luckenwalde with their "big cars". "They are too far away, you do not compare with them."
Thier says that Luckenwalde statistically has not become more uncertain since 2015. And it was good that now more people sat on summer evenings on the benches in the pedestrian zone and Nuthe Park and talked. "That's what they were created for."
However, the fact that these people often look different and speak foreign languages unsettles long-established citizens. A mother pushes a stroller through the park, where it smells of freshly mown grass, a dove coo, clouds are reflected in the pond. "In the evenings, I do not like to run as a woman here," she says.
Heike Klovert / SPIEGEL ONLINE
Nuthe Park
A father tells us that a few years ago you could still picnic with children in this park. "Now you only go here if you are looking for trouble or want to buy drugs." A woman pushing her bike through the park, however, says she has never experienced anything threatening here.
Luckenwalde has changed in recent years. Whether this holds more risks or opportunities, answered each Luckenwalder in his own way. "How do you react to anxiety?" Asks Felix Thier. With sober arguments one can respond badly to this diffuse feeling.
It is a question that will accompany all parties in upcoming election campaigns. Only the AfD seems to have found their very own answer. It stirs the fear.
The left now struggles for a "new beginning", in terms of content and personnel. But what could actually look like, should be clarified only after the election in Thuringia. There Bodo Ramelow, the so far only Prime Minister of the Left Party, wants to defend the State Chancellery - in surveys, however, his Red-Red-Green Alliance no longer has a majority. The AfD can count on strong gains.
Landtag election Brandenburg 2019
Preliminary final result
Second vote result
Shares in percent
SPD
26.2
-5.7
CDU
15.6
-7.4
The left
10.7
-7.9
AFD
23.5
+11.3
green
10.8
+4.6
BVB / Free Voters
5
+2.3
FDP
4.1
+2.6
other
4.1
+0.2
allocation of seats
Total: 88
Majority: 45 seats
10
25
10
5
15
23
The left (10)
SPD (25)
Green (10)
BVB / Free Voters (5)
CDU (15)
AfD (23)
Source: Provincial Returning Officer
Results in detail
