Poisoned election campaign in Glienicke: Klein and Steguweit are at loggerheads!

Poisoned election campaign in Glienicke: Klein and Steguweit are at loggerheads!

Things are boiling in Glienicke, because on October 12, 2025, Uwe Klein from the SPD and Arno Steguweit from the CDU will face each other in an eagerly awaited runoff election for the mayor's office. The campaign is heating up, with both candidates grappling with the challenges of a changing political climate. Incumbent Hans Günther Oberlack from the FDP is not running again due to his age, which completely shuffles the cards.

Uwe Klein has chosen “More togetherness” as his central core theme. Not only is he fighting for the voters' favor, but he is also confronted with personal attacks and a tough online election campaign. Klein says legal action has become necessary against some attacks on him, which he describes as a novel aspect of this election campaign. He reports on social media about difficulties in remaining calm and still wants to have a sensible dialogue with all parties, including the AfD. His clear position is not to make an election recommendation for the AfD, while Steguweit points directly to the position of the AfD parliamentary group leader.

The fight for voters' favor

Arno Steguweit sees himself less as part of the heated debates and emphasizes that he has not taken part in the smear campaigns. He also addressed Klein's responsibilities as a group administrator and calls on him to be responsible for his campaign's online content. The duel between the two candidates will not only take place online, but also in personal conversations. Klein took time off to maintain more intensive contact with citizens, while Steguweit relies on door-to-door conversations. On both fronts, the mobilization of non-voters is seen as crucial to the election outcome.

In the first round of elections on September 21, 2025, Steguweit won 35.5 percent of the votes, while Klein was almost 600 votes behind him with 26.2 percent. This makes it clear: The election winner needs at least 15 percent of the votes of all eligible voters, which means around 1,570 votes from the total of 10,467 eligible voters in Glienicke. It is all the more important that both candidates also mobilize voters who did not vote in the first round.

Campaign strategy and transparency

Both candidates rely on different financing options for their election campaigns. Klein has invested around 10,000 euros without resorting to commercial donations, while Steguweit receives over 90% of its funds from donations and also confirms commercial donation announcements. In the context of this transparency, the CDU has published a compliance and donation code to provide clarity about the origin of its funds.

In an election campaign characterized by social media, the influence of these platforms on voter decisions is often discussed. Experts like Judith Möller and Andreas Jungherr emphasize that social media often spreads one-sided opinions and propagates radical views in order to generate likes and shares. Surprisingly, the influence of social media on voting decisions is considered to be rather small, but the tendency to shift discussions to the right could harm public discourse. This is an aspect that the warm Glienicke voters should not ignore.

Both candidates, Klein and Steguweit, will face the challenge in the coming days of reaching their voters in these troubled waters and shaping the upcoming elections with clear messages and a transparent approach. How they fare in this particular election campaign remains to be seen.

For detailed information about what's happening in Glienicke, look up maz online and moz as well as other aspects about the influence of social media on the election campaign tagesschau.de.