Hard
right stuns with huge election gains in Frankfurt
Published: 07 Mar
2016 12:59 GMT+01:00
The anti-immigration
Alternative for Germany (AfD) stole huge amounts of votes off the
established political parties in elections in central Germany, while
a small neo-Nazi party won 17 percent in one district.
Confirming polling
which shows that the AfD have hugely increased their share of the
vote since Germany decided to open its doors to refugees in late
August 2015, the right-wing party won on average 13.2 percent of
votes at local election in the central German state of Hesse on
Sunday.
This result made the
AfD the third largest party behind Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party
(SPD), who won 28.2 percent and 28.0 percent respectively, Hessischer
Rundfunk reports.
Both of Germany’s
largest political parties lost a substantial share of the vote from
the last elections.
In Hesse’s capital
Wiesbaden, the AfD scored a particular success, winning 16.2 percent
of the vote.
But it is the result
in Frankfurt, a global financial centre with a cosmopolitan
population, which in many ways came as a surprise.
Up until this point
the AfD has largely won votes in economically marginalized areas such
as the states of former East Germany.
The AfD’s previous
best election result was 12.2 percent of the vote in 2014 state
elections in the eastern state of Brandenburg, one of the poorest
regions in Germany.
In former West
Germany, the AfD had previously struggled to make the 5 percent cut
of votes necessary to make it into a state parliament, scoring a best
of 6.1 percent in Hamburg in 2015.
While the AfD were
born as a single issue party in 2013, fighting to dismantle the
European single currency, they lurched to the right in the summer of
2015 when party members toppled founder and economics professor,
Bernd Lucke.
In recent months the
party’s new leadership has caused outrage by suggesting that it is
acceptable to shoot at immigrants who cross into Germany illegally.
With major state
elections coming up in three German states in mid-March, the results
also act as a shot across the bow of the CDU and SPD which both
support an open-door refugee policy.
‘Terrifying
result’
"It’s
terrifying," Eva Högl, vice chairwoman of SPD in the national
parliament, told broadcaster ARD, saying the AfD are following an
"unspeakable course”.
“If they enter the
state parliaments with double digits and maybe even the federal
parliament, this will change the whole German community in a very
negative way.
“Elections are way
too important to teach someone a lesson - it is about forming our
society and democracy."
"The
traditional parties are paying the price for the voters' protest,”
Manfred Pentz, CDU secretary general of Hesse, told to the
Süddeutsche Zeitung on Monday.
Neo-Nazi party win
17 percent in one district
The success of the
AfD was not the only result to send shock waves through the political
establishment.
The neo-Nazi NPD
party managed to win 17 percent in Leun, making them the third
largest party in the 6,000-inhabitant town.
They also won 14
percent of the vote in Büdingen, a town of 21,000 people which also
has the largest refugee shelter in Hesse.
At the last local
elections, the NPD only managed to win 2 percent of the vote in
Büdingen. Statewide, though, the NPD scored a much less impressive
0.3 percent of the vote.
'Search for easy
answers'
Benno Hafeneger, a
professor at the Philipp University of Marburg who specializes in
right-wing extremism, told The Local that the AfD’s success was due
to "a search for fast, easy answers".
"People are
frightened by something they don’t know a thing about and the
traditional parties don’t represent the voters anymore," he
argued.
“Our studies show
that we have about 10 to 15 percent of people who are right-wing
extremists [in Germany] - sometimes even more. But until now this
never showed up in any vote," Hafeneger said.
“What does
surprise me is the dimension which can be seen in the election. About
5 to 10 percent is typically for protest voters - in local elections
especially you normally don’t see the protest voters.
"The biggest
surprise of all is, in the places where the AfD did not compete, the
voters chose the NPD instead - so it seems to be not about the party
itself, it is more about setting a statement,” Hafeneger went on.
How long the AfD
could thrive would be contingent on the success with which Germany
handles the refugee crisis, the academic said, adding that at this
stage no one can tell whether they can establish themselves as a real
political force.
With reporting by
Raphael Warnke
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