Greens' Banaszak rallies East German voters from a camper van as party stares at state parliament exit

Camper van tour through Saxony-Anhalt

Green party co-chair Felix Banaszak set out from Berlin in a camper van, targeting camping sites in Saxony-Anhalt rather than relying on party offices. At the 'Wa-Ca-WI' site near Wischer, he grilled food and asked holidaymakers to talk, aware that the Greens poll at only 4% in the state and are largely seen as a party of wealthy eco-enthusiasts from big cities. Banaszak told Deutsche Welle the aim was to meet people where they are instead of waiting for them to come to a branch office and listen to expert lectures. On the campsites he also rode a bright-green 'Schwalbe' scooter to draw attention, and in Stralsund he was joined by Claudia Müller, the Greens' top candidate for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

We want to show: we go where people are, and we don't wait for them to come to our office to hear specialist talks.

Congress on Rügen: strategy and workshops

After the tour, Banaszak drove the camper van to the harbour of Sassnitz on Rügen island for the party's second 'Ostkongress' in a year. Under the motto 'Close to the people. Strong in change', the gathering was meant to boost morale and pool ideas for the two difficult campaigns. Workshops covered everything from doorstep canvassing to a session entitled 'Winning the East with Taylor Swift. Why we need more creator vibes instead of political blah-blah.' Saxony's Green leader Martin Helbig, who helped lead one of the training sessions, said the party was no longer met with the fierce hostility it faced during the national 'traffic-light' coalition.

This is not a feeling of doom. I feel a positive defiance.

Electoral arithmetic and image problem

The Greens' challenge is stark. In 2024 they were ejected from the state parliaments of Brandenburg and Thuringia, and the latest polls put them at 4% in Saxony-Anhalt, below the 5% threshold for seats. Across the whole of eastern Germany the party has fewer than 15,000 members out of about 183,000 nationally; less than 8% of the membership lives in the relatively sparsely populated eastern states. The party's image as an urban, academic milieu is a handicap, analysts say.

The Greens have always found it hard in the East. There, more than in the West, they rely less on their established, rather academic milieu in the cities.

'Campaign holiday' and calls for lasting presence

To compensate for its thin organisational base, the party is running a 'Wahlkampfurlaub' scheme: volunteers from western states travel east, stay on site and help with the door-to-door effort. Around 500 registrations have already been received, split roughly evenly between the two states. Political scientist Benjamin Höhne, who praised the initiative, warned that the biggest mistake any democratic party could make would be to turn its back on the East. Should the AfD take power in Saxony-Anhalt, he cautioned, the consequences would ripple through the entire federal system, from intelligence sharing between interior authorities to joint decisions in education policy.