On the heels of the AfD’s strong performance outside of its traditional stronghold in the former East German states over the weekend, Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, has said that it is a clear signal that her now-decade-old party has become a people’s party for all Germans.
Speaking at a press conference in the German capital on Monday, October 9th, Weidel, who grew up and studied in what was formerly West Germany, told reporters that the results of Sunday’s elections in Bavaria and Hesse clearly indicate that the AfD is no longer merely an “eastern phenomenon” but a “pan-German people’s party,” Der Tagesspiegel reports.
Referring to this past weekend’s elections that saw the AfD come in second in Hesse and third in Bavaria with 18.4% and 14.6% of the vote, respectively, Weidel underscored that German voters are swinging from “left to right.” Together these two states account for approximately a quarter of the German population.
Furthermore, for Weidel, last weekend’s election results showed that the German electorate definitively rejects calls by the left-liberal ‘traffic light’ coalition to ban the AfD. She also slammed the mainstream parties’ cordon sanitaire, or ‘firewall,’ as it’s called in Germany, against the AfD, describing the exclusionary policy as little more than an expression of “undemocratic contempt for voters.”
Continuing, the AfD co-chief described the election results as a “double whammy,” and emphasized that it was an obvious indication that German voters no longer perceive the AfD as merely a “protest party.” The results exhibit “that we are establishing ourselves broadly among all voter groups,” she added.
Weidel attributed the AfD’s popularity surge mainly to the rapid decline in living standards and economic prosperity in Germany, which she likened to a burning “sparkler” and blamed on ‘traffic light’ coalition policies that run counter to the interests of the majority of Germans. She mentioned that AfD membership has also surged, noting the party now has more than 35,000 members.
It’s worth highlighting that the significant gains made by the AfD in Bavaria and Hesse came nearly exclusively at the expense of Left and liberal parties that make up the ruling ‘traffic light’ coalition, all of whom fared quite poorly—some more than others—in last weekend’s state elections.
While the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) were, without a doubt, this weekend’s biggest loser, just meeting the 5% threshold in Hesse but falling short of it in Bavaria, the SPD secured a mere 8% of the vote in Bavaria and 15.1% in Hesse, both historic lows for the party. Meanwhile, the Greens saw its share of the vote fall to 14% in both states, a significant drop from their previous election results in both cases.
The SPD’s especially lousy showings prompted calls for the resignation of Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. Sahra Wagenknecht, who is seen as the voice of Germany’s anti-woke, anti-mass migration, working-class Left said in a post-election interview that that “anyone who fails in Wiesbaden has no place in Berlin,” and added: “The voters’ red card should be followed by the Chancellor’s dismissal.” The deputy leader of the CDU, Carsten Linnemann, echoed Wagenknecth’s comments, arguing that results clearly indicated that Faeser had lost all credibility among voters.
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, meanwhile, stopped short of any direct criticism of Faeser, who led the party in her home state of Hesse, but said that poor results in both states were a clear “message to Berlin.”
