POLITICO German far right wins first major election since World War II The far-right Alternative for Germany party won the Thuringia state election, September 1, 2024 6:42 pm CET By James Angelos and Nette Nöstlinger

 POLITICO

German far right wins first major election since World War II

The far-right Alternative for Germany party won the Thuringia state election, dealing a blow to the country’s coalition government.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) Campaigns In Erfurt Day Before State Elections

It will mark the first time a radical-right party has won a major German election since World War II. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

September 1, 2024 6:42 pm CET

By James Angelos and Nette Nöstlinger

Germany’s far right claimed its biggest electoral success since World War II, winning a regional vote in the east of the country Sunday, according to the preliminary result.

The triumph of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), in a region that was under communist control during the Cold War, is a huge blow to Germany’s political center — especially for the three parties of the ruling coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which suffered significant losses.

The AfD came in first in the state of Thuringia with close to 33 percent of the vote, a result that will prompt much soul-searching as to how the center failed to stop the electoral re-emergence of the far right despite the AfD’s growing extremism.

“For us, it’s a historic success,” said Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s national leaders.

In the more populous state of Saxony, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) appears to have staved off the far right by finishing first with around 32 percent of the vote, with the AfD trailing close behind.

A new populist-left party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which is led by a former member of East Germany’s communist party, finished third in both states.

The surge of parties on the extremes of the political spectrum will likely be seen as another blow to Scholz’s already weak coalition government.

The three coalition parties — Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) — took significant losses in the Sunday ballots. In Thuringia, for example, the Greens and the FDP appear to have both crashed out of the state parliament after failing to meet the five-percent threshold necessary to gain seats.

While the SPD lost less ground in the elections, its result was still dismal. The party has already lost much of its relevance in Germany’s East, and is coming off its worst performance in a nationwide election for more than a century, in June’s European election. 

“For the SPD, this is not an evening to cheer,” said Kevin Kühnert, the party’s general secretary.

Despite the AfD’s strong performance, however, the party is unlikely to take power. All the other parties that appeared to win seats in the state parliaments have previously refused to govern in coalition with the AfD. In Thuringia, however, the party has more than one-third of seats, allowing it to block certain decisions such as the appointment of judges to the state constitutional court.

The populist BSW, which merges traditional right-wing stances on immigration and other social issues with customary left-wing economic and welfare policies, celebrated the election results. Given the fractured political landscape in both states, the BSW will likely play a kingmaker role in the formation of coalitions in both state parliaments.

Despite the AfD’s strong performance, the party is unlikely to assume real governing power. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

That coalition-building process could take weeks or months, given the complicated electoral math — and could lead to strange political bedfellows, with centrist conservatives likely to find themselves ruling with a populist-left party led by a former communist.

The result could also prove a boon to Russian President Vladimir Putin who, during the Cold War, worked as a KGB spy in Dresden in then-East Germany. Both the AfD and BSW favor closer relations with the Kremlin — and want to halt German military aid for Ukraine.

“We want the war in Ukraine to end and we don’t see that happening with more and more arms deliveries,” BSW leader Wagenknecht told public broadcaster ARD after the vote.

Support for the AfD surged even after state-level domestic intelligence agencies in Thuringia and Saxony classified the local branches of the party as extremist organizations intending to undermine German democracy.

The fact that almost one in three voters in both states supported the AfD despite official warnings speaks to widespread public distrust in mainstream parties and institutions in Germany’s East. Polls show the AfD is also leading in the eastern state of Brandenburg, where voters go to the polls Sept. 22.

One issue troubling voters was migration, according to pre-election surveys, with respondents in Thuringia and Saxony citing it as among their top three concerns along with crime and “social protection.” According to one survey for German public television, 81-percent of voters agreed with the statement: “We need a fundamentally different asylum and refugee policy so that fewer people come to us.”

The Sunday voting followed a deadly knife attack several days earlier in the western German city of Solingen, which reanimated a charged national debate on immigration and crime. The suspect, a Syrian man suspected of being a member of the Islamic State, is accused of killing three people and injuring several more.

Scholz called the attack “terrorism,” while ministers in his government announced a tougher migration measures ahead of the Sunday elections, vowing to deport migrants who commit violent crimes and to cut benefits for asylum seekers in some cases.

The AfD’s gains were especially massive among young voters in both states, according to initial survey data. In Thuringia the party finished first with 37 percent support among 18- to 24-year-olds, an increase of almost 20 percentage points compared to its result in the previous state election in 2019. In Saxony, meanwhile, the AfD won 31 percent of voters in that age group, an increase of 14 percentage points compared to 2019.

The outcome delighted Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in Thuringia who is considered one of the most extreme politicians in the party, having twice been convicted by a German court of intentionally using Nazi rhetoric.

“I am more than happy,” Höcke said of the result on public television. The outcome, he added, “fills me with great pride and satisfaction.”