Regional elections in East Germany have the far right set to win its first state election since the Nazi era. Initial exit polls predicted that the AfD had gained some 33% of the vote in Thuringia, with the mainstream conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) party polling at around 23%. The far right’s success was also reflected in the results in the state of Saxony, where the AfD appeared to be only narrowly losing to the CDU, Angela Merkel’s former party.
The inexorable rise of the AfD has sent shockwaves not just through Germany’s political establishment but also throughout the rest of the Western alliance. Speaking shortly after the results were announced, the AfD's top candidate in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, a highly controversial figure in Germany, hailed a "historic victory" and expressed his great pride.
Whether the AfD’s impressive showing will allow it to dominate the local legislatures is unclear, as the CDU has ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD, meaning it has effectively been denied power. The CDU’s objection to forming a coalition with the AfD in Thuringia follows German domestic intelligence's recent decision to designate the party as “definitely right-wing extremist.”
Even so, after the AfD registered twice as many votes as the three parties of Chancellor Scholz’s ruling traffic-light coalition combined, it is now set to have a third of seats in both parliaments, giving it the ability to block constitutional changes and the appointment of state functionaries.
Scholz said the results were "bitter" and called on other mainstream parties to form state governments without the far right. "The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country's reputation," he said in a statement to Reuters.
Green leader Omid Nouripour described the Thuringia result as a “breaking point” and that ethnic and sexual minorities are “simply afraid” that “an openly right-wing extremist party” will be the largest party in a state parliament.
News magazine Der Spiegel, meanwhile, has called the AfD “the dominant force in eastern Germany”, noting that it could also win the upcoming election in neighbouring Brandenburg in three weeks’ time.
The AfD’s breakthrough has been achieved despite calls to ban the party after allegations surfaced that its members had discussed mass deportations of foreigners at a secret meeting. In another scandal this year, a senior AfD official was reported to have declared that not all Germans who served in the Waffen-SS during World War II should be designated as criminals.
Impact on Ukraine war?
Neither of these scandals appears to have impacted voters in the AfD heartlands of East Germany, an area that once formed part of the Soviet Union and whose population is known for its strong eurosceptic, pro-Russian views.
Apart from giving Germany’s ruling coalition a bloody nose, the AfD’s success inevitably raises questions about Berlin’s continued support for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia—a concern that will increase significantly among NATO leaders if, as is now expected, the AfD continues to make further gains in forthcoming elections.
Despite initial misgivings, Germany has now become one of the major donors to Ukraine’s war effort, without which it is questionable whether Kyiv would have been able to mount its major counter-offensive in Russia’s Kursk region last month.
But with the AfD relying heavily on the support of pro-Russian voters based primarily in East Germany, any further gains the party makes could increase the pressure on Berlin to curtail its support for Kyiv, with all the implications that could have for Ukraine’s future war effort.
Setback for Scholz
The AfD’s strong showing in last weekend’s regional elections certainly represents a significant setback for Scholz, who is now facing calls to dissolve the national government and call a fresh general election.
Scholz has become deeply unpopular with German voters, with his personal approval ratings reaching a historical low and his warring coalition government becoming one of the least popular German governments in modern history.
According to one recent poll, more than 70% of Germans are dissatisfied with his leadership, while two-thirds are dissatisfied with the coalition, which is struggling to fill a €17bn black hole in the national budget. The chancellor’s growing unpopularity was reflected in June’s European elections when Scholz led his SPD to their worst federal election result in over a century.
Following the initial declaration of the regional elections vote, Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy leader of the Free Democrat party, said the result showed that the coalition had “lost its legitimacy.”
“If a significant portion of the electorate refuses to support it this way, there must be consequences,” he warned.
Voter discontent with the coalition’s pursuit of radical net zero policies, which are being implemented at the same time as the country faces a cost-of-living crisis, has been an important factor in the AfD’s electoral success, paired with rising tension over migrants. While the overwhelming majority of migrants who have been granted citizenship during the past decade have successfully integrated into German society, occasional acts of violence, such as the recent terrorist attack on a German festival in Solingen in which three people were killed, have inevitably increased tensions.
The attack, which resulted in the arrest of a Syrian refugee accused of carrying out the killings, took place just nine days before the elections, increasing pressure on the coalition to crack down on illegal migration. Scholz’s government responded by announcing that it would no longer pay benefits to any asylum seekers who had arrived in the country if they had arrived illegally from another EU state.
The “tough measures” announced by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser on Thursday aim to slash benefits for people who have no right to be in Germany. “Nobody will starve or sleep in the streets,” Faeser clarified, but further support would be cut “to absolutely nothing. Just the deportation.”
At the same time, Berlin announced that the first deportation flight containing 28 convicted criminals had taken off for Afghanistan following a deal struck with the Taliban.
Among those on board was a refugee who had come to Germany as an unaccompanied minor and then raped an 11-year-old girl, a man convicted of 160 crimes and a man who had participated in the gang rape of a 14-year-old girl. Each of those received 1,000 Euros from the German taxpayer in the hope that the payments would make the deportations impossible to contest.
Speaking on the eve of the elections at an event in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony, Scholz said, “This is a clear sign: those who commit crimes cannot bank on the fact that we won’t be able to deport them.”
Unfortunately for the ruling coalition, the German chancellor’s belated intervention failed to make much impact on East German voters.
