AfD Hits Record 40% in Brandenburg Poll, Doubling Woidke's SPD

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has reached 40 percent in a state-level poll for Brandenburg, the highest figure ever recorded for the party there, according to a survey by the institute INSA published on October 10, 2026.

INSA interviewed 1,000 eligible voters in Brandenburg between September 29 and October 6, 2026, on behalf of three regional newspapers: the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, the Märkische Oderzeitung and the Lausitzer Rundschau. The reported margin of error is about 3.1 percentage points.

The numbers

Behind the AfD, the Social Democrats (SPD) of state premier Dietmar Woidke were measured at 20 percent, roughly half the AfD's score. The Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Left Party (Die Linke) were each put at 9 percent, while the Greens and the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance (BSW) each stood at 7 percent.

Compared with an earlier INSA poll from June 2026 cited by the newspaper Tagesspiegel, SPD support has fallen further and the CDU dropped to what the paper called its worst-ever Brandenburg result, down from 12 percent in June. The AfD's 40 percent would be roughly double the 29.2 percent the party won in the actual September 2024 state election, when the SPD narrowly finished first with 30.9 percent.

Coalition arithmetic

Tagesspiegel reported that, based on the poll, AfD and BSW together would command 47 percent of seats, while CDU, SPD, Greens and Die Linke combined would reach only 45 percent. That would make it mathematically impossible to form a governing majority in the state parliament without either the AfD or the BSW, according to the newspaper's analysis of the survey.

All of Germany's other major parties maintain a so-called firewall policy of refusing to form coalitions with the AfD at state and federal level, a stance that remains in place in Brandenburg, according to Tagesspiegel.

Extremism classification and political reaction

The Brandenburg state branch of the AfD was classified as "gesichert rechtsextremistisch" (confirmed right-wing extremist) by the state's domestic intelligence agency, the Verfassungsschutz, on April 14, 2025, according to a document published by Brandenburg's interior ministry. The agency cited the party's push for mass "remigration" of people with a migration background and statements by party figures describing the federal republic as a "party dictatorship," while stressing that the classification applies to the party organization and not to individual voters or members.

The AfD Brandenburg has challenged the classification in the Potsdam Administrative Court, though it withdrew a related request for an emergency injunction, the ministry document states.

Woidke and Brandenburg's interior minister, Jan Redmann (CDU), responded to the polling trend with a joint opinion piece titled "Reißt Euch zusammen" ("Pull yourselves together"), according to Tagesspiegel, which reported that the two state politicians attributed voter dissatisfaction mainly to federal-level policy rather than to the state government's own record.

Background

Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, last held a state election on September 22, 2024, which the SPD won narrowly ahead of the AfD. Under the state's regular five-year term, the next scheduled election is due by autumn 2029, according to information compiled on Wikipedia. No early election has been called.

The BSW, the party led by Sahra Wagenknecht, won 13.5 percent in the 2024 Brandenburg election and initially entered a coalition government with the SPD. That coalition broke down in early 2026 amid internal disputes within BSW, after which the SPD formed a new coalition with the CDU in March 2026, according to a summary of the state election compiled on Wikipedia. BSW's support has roughly halved since the 2024 election, falling to 7 percent in the new INSA poll.