Germany’s far-right party wins first state election

BERLIN (AP) — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won the first state election in the east of the country since World War II on Sunday and looks set to finish second in other places, very close to the conservatives.

On the other hand, the new Sara Wagenknecht Union (BSW), founded by a prominent leftist, also had a strong influence, while the parties that formed the governing coalition of unpopular Chancellor Olaf Scholz achieved very poor results.

The AfD won 32.8% of the vote in Thuringia, well ahead of the main national opposition center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which received 23.6%.

In neighboring Saxony, where vote counting is already well underway, public television channels ARD and ZDF projected the UDC, which has led in the state since German reunification in 1990, at 31.9 percent to the AfD’s 30.6 percent. The AfD made smaller gains in Thuringia and Saxony compared with the last state election in 2019.

“For the first time since 1949, an openly far-right party has become the most powerful party in a state parliament, and this causes deep concern and fear for many people,” said Omid Nouripour, leader of the Greens, one of the parties that make up the governing coalition at the national level.

Other parties have said they will not bring the AfD to power by forming an alliance with it. Still, its strength could make the formation of a new state government extremely difficult, forcing other parties to form new and unusual coalitions. This is further complicated by the fact that the BSW received 15.8% of the vote in Thuringia and nearly 12% in Saxony.

“This is a historic success for us,” Alice Weidel, national co-chair of the AfD party, told ARD, calling the result a “requiem” for Scholz’s coalition.

“The voters in both states know that we will not form a coalition with the AfD and that will remain the case; we are very, very clear about that,” said SVP national secretary Carsten Linnemann.

Weidel called such comments “pure ignorance” and noted that “voters want the AfD to be involved in government.”

Anti-immigrant attitudes, suspicion of German military aid for Ukraine and deep dissatisfaction with a national government notorious for internal strife are among the factors driving support for populist parties in a region that is less prosperous than Western countries such as Germany.

The AfD is strongest in the east of the country, a region that was once communist. Internal intelligence agencies placed the party’s branches in Saxony and Thuringia under official surveillance as “proven right-wing extremist” groups. The group’s leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, was found guilty of deliberately using Nazi slogans at a political event but has appealed.

Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats managed to hold on to two state legislatures with single-digit support, but the environmentalist Greens lost seats in Thuringia. Both parties were coalition partners in the outgoing two state governments. The third party in the national government, the free-market Free Democrats, also lost seats in Thuringia. They are no longer represented in Saxony.

Another state election is due in Brandenburg, another eastern state currently governed by Scholz’s party, on Sept. 22. Germany’s next national election is due in a little over a year.