Bjorn Hecke (AfD) after announcing the first forecasts for the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, in Erfurt, Germany, on Sunday.
Michael Kappeler/DPA
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Michael Kappeler/DPA
BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany party won its first state election on Sunday in the country’s east and is expected to finish at least a close second to the mainstream conservatives in the second vote, according to polls.
A new party founded by a prominent leftist also made an immediate impact, while the parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular national government achieved extremely weak results.
Projections by public broadcasters ARD and ZDF based on exit polls and partial vote counts show the Alternative for Germany party will win 32-33% of the vote in Thuringia — far ahead of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, the country’s main opposition party, on around 24%.
In the neighbouring state of Saxony, forecasts show support for the CDU – which has led the state since German reunification in 1990 – at 31.7%, while the AfD is on 30.6-31.4%.
“An openly far-right party has become the strongest force in the state parliament for the first time since 1949, and that makes many people extremely worried and scared,” said Omid Nouripour, leader of the Greens, one of the national governing parties.
Other parties say they will not bring the AfD to power by joining a coalition. Even so, the party’s strength could make forming a new state government extremely difficult, forcing parties to form strange new alliances. The new Sahra Wagenknecht, or BSW, coalition is expected to win 16% of the vote in Thuringia and 12% in Saxony, adding another layer of complexity.
“This is a historic success for us,” Alice Weidel, the AfD’s national co-leader, told ARD. She described the result as a “requiem” for Scholz’s coalition.
CDU national secretary Carsten Linnemann said his party would stick to its longstanding refusal to cooperate with the far right. “Voters in both states know that we will not form a coalition with the AfD, and that will remain the case — we are very, very clear about this,” he said.
Weidel condemned that as “complete ignorance” and said “voters want the AfD to be in government”.
Deep dissatisfaction with the national government, notorious for its infighting, anti-immigrant sentiment and skepticism about German military aid to Ukraine are among the factors contributing to support for populist parties in the region, which is less prosperous than western Germany.
The AfD is strongest in the formerly communist east, and the country’s domestic intelligence agency has officially placed the party’s branches in both Saxony and Thuringia under surveillance as “proven right-wing extremist” groups. The party’s leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has been convicted of deliberately using Nazi slogans at political events, but is appealing.
Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats are at least on track to retain their positions in two state legislatures with single-digit support, but the environmentalist Greens appear set to lose seats in Thuringia. The two parties were junior coalition partners in both outgoing state governments. The third party in the national government, the pro-business Free Democrats, is also set to lose seats in Thuringia. It has no representation in Saxony.
A third state election will follow on September 22 in another eastern state, Brandenburg, currently led by Scholz’s party. Germany’s next national election is more than a year away.
Thuringian politics are particularly complicated because the Left Party of outgoing governor Bodo Ramelow, who leads a minority government, has been reduced to insignificance in the national election. Forecasts show the party losing nearly two-thirds of its support compared to five years ago, down to around 12%.
Sahra Wagenknecht, long one of the party’s most prominent figures, left last year to form her own party, which is now outpacing the left. Wagenknecht has celebrated what she calls an unprecedented success for a new party, highlighting the AfD’s refusal to cooperate with Höcke and saying she hopes the party can form “a good government” with the CDU.
The CDU has long refused to cooperate with the Left Party, the descendants of East Germany’s ruling communists. It has not ruled out working with Wagenknecht’s BSW — which would probably be necessary to form any government without the AfD, at least in Thuringia. The BSW is also strongest in the east.
The AfD has tapped into high anti-immigration sentiment in the region. The August 23 knife attack in the western town of Solingen, in which a suspected Syrian extremist allegedly killed three people, helped push the issue back to the top of Germany’s political agenda and prompted Scholz’s government to announce new restrictions on knives and new measures to ease deportations.
Wagenknecht’s BSW combines left-wing economic policy with an immigration-sceptic agenda. The CDU has also stepped up pressure on the national government to take a tougher stance on immigration.
Germany’s stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine is also a sensitive issue in the east. Berlin is Ukraine’s second-largest arms supplier after the United States; those arms deliveries are something both the AfD and the BSW oppose. Wagenknecht has also criticized the recent decision by the German and U.S. governments to begin deploying long-range missiles to Germany by 2026.
