2024 Brandenburg state election

The election to the state parliament Landtag of Brandenburg was held on 22 September 2024. The outgoing Third Woidke cabinet was a black-red-green "flag of Kenya" coalition consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and The Greens, led by Minister-President Dietmar Woidke of the SPD. Despite losses of his partners, he could form a Fourth Woidke cabinet supported by the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).

Brandenburg was the third state election within former East Germany in the month of September 2024, three weeks after the state elections in Thuringia and in Saxony in which the Alternative for Germany (AfD) had performed well, coming in a close second in Saxony, and taking a clear lead in Thuringia under Björn Höcke.

As the AfD is subject to a Firewall policy against the far-right in Germany, and was leading in the Brandenburg polls by 10%, the election became a two-horse race, either for AfD or against AfD, with several parties even losing representation at all. Despite polling showing them consistently trailing in second place, the SPD, which has governed Brandenburg since its 1990 re-establishment, received support from others and remained the largest party with a five percentage point swing in its favour. The AfD received a swing of six points and won just over 29% of the vote, but was denied to be strongest party.

Recently split off from Die Linke, thus with known candidates and with effective structures in the state, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) debuted at 13.5%, followed by the CDU which declined to 12%. The outgoing government narrowly lost its majority as the Greens collapsed and fell short of the 5% electoral threshold, losing all their seats. Following the BSW walkout, The Left also suffered major losses and fell out of the Landtag, as did the Brandenburg Free Voters. The FDP, which had won 9.3% of the vote in the 2021 German federal election in Brandenburg and was part of a three party coalition that ruled Germany until November 2024, fell to 0.8% of the vote, their worst result in any state election ever, eclipsing the 0.9% of the vote in Saxony two weeks prior, and foreshadowing its collapse on national level.