Far-right parties have become the largest party in Germany's state parliaments for the first time since World War II, while a new populist force on the left has gained a firm foothold in the country's political landscape, exit polls showed on Sunday.
Two highly-anticipated elections in the eastern former Communist bloc made clear their dissatisfaction with Germany's mainstream parties, with primary results showing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) coming in first in Thuringia with 32.8% of the vote and second in Saxony with 30.6%.
“This is a historic success for us. It is the first time that we have become the strongest force in state elections. This is a requiem for this coalition government,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said. [in Berlin].”
The 11-year-old AfD won mayoral and local government offices for the first time last year but is not in state government. The rest of the Democrats have vowed to maintain a “bulwark of opposition” to working with the AfD and to prevent it from taking power.
The state election results in Saxony and Thuringia were disastrous for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-party center-left federal government, which only managed single-digit vote shares in each state, a year before Germany's next general election.
The results had been expected for months, but the centrist parties were unable to reverse the trend and the election results shocked the political world. Turnout in both states was high, at about 74 percent.
The left-wing but socially conservative Zahra Wagenknecht Union (BSW), named after its firebrand leader, found deep resonance in the east with its calls for higher taxes on the wealthy, tougher policies towards immigrants and refugees, and an end to military aid to Ukraine.
Preliminary results showed no party won a majority, but the eight-month-old BSW won 11.8% of the vote in Saxony and 15.8% in Thuringia, meaning it could play a key role in government-forming talks in both states.
Wagenknecht told reporters that it was “the first time in the history of the republic” that a party had performed so well in its first state elections. “This is something to be proud of,” he said.
The conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is leading national opinion polls and is expected to win Saxony with about 32% of the vote, just as it did five years ago, giving a boost to its leader, Friedrich Merz, who is seeking to challenge Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the general election.
In Thuringia, it came in second to the AfD. 23.6%And it could potentially form an ideologically awkward governing coalition with smaller parties, including Wagenknecht.
Merz has said the CDU would never work with extremists but has steadily moved the party to the right since Angela Merkel left government in 2021, particularly in its rhetoric on immigration.
Many eastern voters say they are increasingly disillusioned with mainstream politics more than three decades after the country was reunited, and the lingering effects of structural decline, population decline and sluggish economic growth have reinforced their sense that they remain second-class citizens.
“The AfD has built a core base [in the east] “Increasingly, voters are voting based on their beliefs and not just on dissatisfaction with other parties,” said Andre Brodtz, a political scientist at the University of Erfurt in Thuringia.
The anti-immigration, anti-Islam AfD party spent the final week of the campaign repeating its message that the government was “abandoning” its people, while stoking shock and anger over a mass stabbing attack in the western city of Solingen, allegedly carried out by a Syrian asylum seeker.
The party, whose branches in Saxony and Thuringia are classified as right-wing extremist by security authorities, could still come in first in Brandenburg, a rural state around Berlin that goes to the polls on Sept. 22.
Thuringia's co-leader, Bjorn Höcke, has repeatedly used banned Nazi slogans at rallies and called for a “transformation” of Germany's culture of Holocaust remembrance and redemption.
His goal was to win a blocking minority of one-third of the votes in Thuringia. The Nazis gained power in German state governments for the first time. He came to power in Berlin in 1930 and consolidated power three years later, and the final results, due by early Monday morning, will make clear his success.
At a rally in Erfurt a few days before the election, Hocke told a cheering crowd that only he and the AfD stood in the way of a “cartel party” that sought to “replace the German people” with a multicultural society under a totalitarian dictatorship.
Building a coalition government in both states could be difficult given the divided results returned by voters.
Brodtz described the rise of the BSW as a “game changer”, highlighting its rejection of established parties and offering frustrated easterners an alternative to the AfD which is seen as too extreme.
Already preparing for federal elections in 2025, Wagenknecht has suggested there would be costs to joining a coalition government and has hit out at Russia's recent decision to allow it to take part in the election, while calling for “diplomacy” towards Russia. US deploys long-range missiles in Germany From 2026.
Scholz's coalition of the centre-left Social Democrats, the green Greens and the liberal Free Democrats is already in a weak position, with the parties Reasons to Fear Sunday's election night results.
Torn Ideological differences and personal conflictsBut the government has stumbled in recent months on key policy initiatives, such as reviving the flagging economy and getting more electric cars on German roads. Green party co-chair Omid Nouripour recently described Berlin's coalition as a “caretaker government” after 16 years in power under Chancellor Merkel.
Nouripour offered a sober assessment of the election results on Sunday, saying the rise of the far-right was “causing deep concern and fear for many people.”
