German
far-right party AfD poised for state election victory in east
Alternative
für Deutschland leader speaks of ‘historic success’ of top place in Thuringia
and second in Saxony
Deborah Cole
in Berlin
Sun 1 Sep
2024 19.32 CEST
A far-right
party became the biggest force in a German state parliament for the first time
since the second world war, exit polls showed on Sunday, while a new populist
force on the left established a firm foothold in the country’s political
landscape.
Voters in
two closely watched elections in the former communist east made their
dissatisfaction with Germany’s mainstream political parties clear, putting the
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in the top spot in Thuringia, with
between 31.2 and 33.2% of the vote, and second place in Saxony, with
30.6%-31.4%, according to preliminary results.
Alice
Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader, said: “It is a historic success for us. It is the
first time we have become the strongest force in a state election. It is a
requiem for this coalition [in Berlin].”
The
11-year-old AfD clinched its first mayoral and district government posts last
year, but has never joined a state government. The remaining, democratic
parties have vowed to maintain a “firewall” of opposition to working with the
AfD, keeping it out of power.
The results
in Saxony and Thuringia proved disastrous for the three ruling parties in
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left-led federal government, each scoring
single-digit percentage shares of the vote in both states one year before
Germany holds its next general election.
Although the
outcome had been predicted for months, the centrist parties proved unable to
reverse the trend and the results sent shockwaves through the political
landscape. Turnout in both states was high, at about 74%.
The leftwing
but socially conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), named after its
firebrand leader, found that its calls for higher taxes on the rich, a tougher
line on immigration and asylum and an end to military support for Ukraine
struck a deep chord in the east.
As no party
won an absolute majority, the eight-month-old BSW could prove key in talks on
forming a government in both states, as it drew between 11.5% and 12% in Saxony
and about 16% in Thuringia, according to the provisional results.
Wagenknecht
told reporters it was the “first time in the history of the republic” that a
party had performed so well in state elections on its first try. “That’s
something one can be proud of,” she said.
The
conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), which is
leading in the national polls, appeared on course to win in Saxony as it did
five years ago with about 32%, putting wind in the sails of its national
leader, Friedrich Merz, who aims to challenge Scholz in the national election.
In
Thuringia, it came in second behind the AfD, with about 24%, and may be able to
hammer out an ideologically awkward ruling alliance with smaller parties,
including Wagenknecht’s.
Merz has
said the CDU will never work with the extremists, but has moved his party
steadily rightward, particularly in its rhetoric on immigration, since Angela
Merkel left power in 2021.
Many eastern
voters say they are increasingly disillusioned with mainstream politics more
than three decades after national reunification, with the lingering impact of
structural decline, depopulation and lagging economic performance compounding a
sense that they are still second-class citizens.
“The AfD has
built up a core base [in the east] that now votes for it out of conviction, not
just owing to frustration with the other parties,” said Prof André Brodocz, a
political scientist at the University of Erfurt in Thuringia.
The
anti-migration, anti-Islam AfD spent the last week of its campaign hammering
home the message that the government is “failing” its citizens, while
harnessing shock and outrage over the deadly mass stabbing in the western city
of Solingen, allegedly by a Syrian rejected asylum seeker.
The party,
whose Saxony and Thuringia chapters have been classed as rightwing extremist by
security authorities, could still come in first in Brandenburg, the rural state
surrounding Berlin, which will vote on 22 September, polls suggest.
Its
co-leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has repeatedly used banned Nazi slogans at
his rallies and called for an “about-face” in Germany’s culture of Holocaust
remembrance and atonement.
His aim was
to achieve a blocking minority of one-third of the votes in Thuringia, where
the Nazis first won power in a German state government in 1930 before
consolidating control in Berlin three years later. Final results due by early
Monday will show if he was successful.
At a rally
in Erfurt days before the election, Höcke told a cheering crowd that he and the
AfD were the only ones standing in the way of the “cartel parties” working to
“replace the German people” with a “multicultural society” under a
“totalitarian dictatorship”.
Given the
fractured results handed back by voters, coalition-building in both states
could prove tricky.
The BSW’s
rise was described as a “gamechanger” by Brodocz, underlining the rejection of
the established political parties while offering frustrated easterners an
alternative to the AfD, which many see as too radical.
Wagenknecht,
already gearing up for the 2025 federal elections, has suggested that she would
drive up the price for joining any coalition, demanding “diplomacy” toward
Russia while railing against a recent decision to allow the US to deploy
long-range missiles in Germany from 2026.
Scholz’s
coalition of the centre-left Social Democrats, the ecologist Greens and the
liberal Free Democrats was already on the back foot and each of the parties had
reason to dread Sunday’s election night results.
Riven by
ideological differences and personal rivalries, the government has stumbled in
recent months in realising its main policy initiatives, including kickstarting
the moribund economy and getting more electric vehicles on German roads. The
Greens’ co-leader, Omid Nouripour, recently described the coalition in Berlin
as a “transitional government” in the period after Merkel’s 16 years in power.
On Sunday,
Nouripour gave a sobering assessment of the election results, saying the
breakthrough for the far right “causes many people very deep concern and fear”.
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