The anti-immigration, anti-globalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is set to achieve its best ever election result as it contests two regional elections in the states of Saxony and Thuringia on Sunday, September 1st.
If confirmed, such results would signal a spectacular rejection of Germany’s ruling parties and could strengthen populist voices across Europe.
According to the latest polls, the party—which has heavily criticised the governing left-liberal coalition in Berlin for its pro-migration and radical green agenda—is projected to finish in first place and receive 30% of the votes in Thuringia, a 7-point increase on its result from five years ago.
In neighbouring Saxony, it is on course to gain 31% of the votes, a 3.5-point increase, which would guarantee second place for the party behind the centre-right CDU (now polling at 33%). In Thuringia, the CDU will likely be the runner-up behind AfD, with 22%.
The polls suggest that the eastern part of Germany is veering sharply to the right, following a disastrous three years with the Social democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the liberal FDP at the helm in Berlin. Both AfD and the CDU have criticised the so-called ‘traffic light coalition’—named after the colours of the respective parties, red, green, and yellow—for overseeing the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants, the drastic rise in crime, the collapse of security, and for burdening ordinary citizens and farmers with tax hikes in the name of climate protection.
AfD has also attacked the government for its hawkish support of Ukraine in its war with Russia, and for cutting Germany off from cheap Russian energy sources, instead of attempting to achieve peace.
This sentiment seems to be popular in the eastern states of Germany where a newly formed party, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) has adopted a similar approach to the AfD with regards to Ukraine, energy policy, and migration. The left-wing nationalists, who split from Die Linke party last year, are set to secure 12% of the votes in Saxony, and 17% in Thuringia, finishing third in both states.
Consequently, the governing parties, which are currently performing disastrously in nationwide opinion polls—not just the regional ones—will suffer heavy losses at the elections.
In Thuringia, the Greens and the FDP may not even succeed in reaching the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament, and the SPD will drop to 7% from its previous 8% in 2019. The biggest loser could be Die Linke, which has governed the state in a coalition with the SPD and the Greens since 2014. The party—which Sahra Wagenknecht believes has abandoned its voters by focusing on gender and identity politics, climate change, and sexual minorities instead of workers and pensioners—is projected to drop to 14% from the 31% it reached in 2019.
In Saxony—where the CDU is in a governing alliance with the Social democrats and the Greens—the FDP and Die Linke will likely fail to reach the 5% threshold, while the SPD is polling at 7%, and the Greens are on 6%.
Bild describes the elections as a possible political earthquake, as the mainstream parties who have relied on governing together just to keep the ‘far-right’ AfD at bay, will no longer be able to collaborate as they won’t have the backing of the majority of voters.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz has ruled out cooperating in any shape or form with the AfD, a party that many in the German establishment are trying to ban for espousing “extremist” views—in other words, views that are not acceptable to them.
The question remains whether a coalition between the CDU and the left-wing BSW is viable. Sahra Wagenknecht has rejected entering into coalitions with any party supporting military aid for Ukraine or the stationing of U.S. missiles in Germany—both policies endorsed by the CDU.
“There are various scenarios that could unfold after the elections, but in almost all cases they will lead to a serious change in the political landscape of Germany,” according to the conservative publication Tichys Einblick.
