German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has urged Germany’s major parties to exclude “right-wing extremists” after poll results showed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won first place in regional elections.
Voters in two closely watched elections in Eastern Europe – the former GDR – made clear their dissatisfaction with Germany’s main political parties, with the AfD taking first place in Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote, and second place in Saxony, with 30.6%.
Scholz calls the results “bitter” and “worrying”
“Our country cannot and must not get used to this. The AfD is harming Germany. “It weakens the economy, divides society and ruins our country’s reputation,” Scholz said, adding that the darkest predictions, according to which his Social Democrats (SPD) could be excluded from a regional parliament for the first time, have not materialized.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the AfD, said: “This is a historic success for us. It is the first time that we have become the strongest force in a regional election. It is a requiem for this coalition.” [en Berlín]”.
The AfD, which has existed for 11 years, won its first city hall and district government last year, but has never been part of a single-party government. to landThe other democratic parties have pledged to maintain a firewall to avoid making deals with the AfD, thus keeping it out of power.
The results in Saxony and Thuringia were disastrous for the three ruling parties in Scholz’s centre-left federal government, which each received single-digit vote shares in both states a year before Germany’s next general election.
Although the result had been expected for months, the traditional parties proved unable to reverse the trend. Turnout in both states was high, around 74%.
The left-wing but socially conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), named after its leader, found that its calls for higher taxes on the rich, tougher immigration and asylum policies and an end to military support for Ukraine resonated deeply in the east.
Since no party won an absolute majority, the BSW, created eight months ago, could play a key role in negotiations to form a government in the two states, since it obtained 11.8% in Saxony and 15.8% in Thuringia.
Wagenknecht told reporters that it was “the first time in the history of the Republic” that a party had performed so well in regional elections on its first attempt. “That’s something you can be proud of,” he said.
The conservative opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), leading national polls, won in Saxony, as it did five years ago, with almost 32%, giving wings to its national leader Friedrich Merz, who aspires to challenge Scholz in the national elections.
In Thuringia, it comes second behind the AfD, with 23.6%, and may be able to forge an ideologically uneasy governing alliance with smaller parties, including Wagenknecht’s.
Merz has said the CDU will never make a deal with the ultras, but his party has moved steadily to the right, particularly in its rhetoric on immigration, since Angela Merkel left power in 2021.
Many eastern voters say they are increasingly disillusioned with mainstream politics more than three decades after national reunification, with the lingering impact of structural decline, depopulation and lagging economic performance deepening the sense that they remain second-class citizens.
“The AfD has created a core [en el Este] “Who now votes for him out of conviction, and not just out of frustration with the other parties,” explains André Brodocz, a political scientist at the University of Erfurt (Thuringia).
The anti-immigration and anti-Islam AfD has spent the final week of its campaign hammering home the message that the government is “letting down” its citizens, while capitalizing on the shock and outrage over the mass stabbing attacks in the western town of Solingen at the hands of a failed Syrian asylum seeker.
The party, whose branches in Saxony and Thuringia have been classified as far-right by security authorities, could still come out on top in Brandenburg, the rural state surrounding Berlin, which votes on September 22, polls suggest.
His co-leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has repeatedly used banned Nazi slogans at his rallies and called for a “change of course” in Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance and atonement.
At a rally in Erfurt days before the election, Höcke told a cheering crowd that he and the AfD were the only ones standing in the way of the “cartel parties” working to “replace the German people” with a “multicultural society” under a “totalitarian dictatorship.”
Given the fragmented election results, forming coalitions in both states could prove complicated.
Professor Brodocz calls the rise of the BSW a “game changer” because it underlines the rejection of established political parties and offers frustrated citizens in the East an alternative to the AfD, which many see as too radical.
Wagenknecht, who is already preparing for the 2025 federal elections, has suggested he would sell his coalition membership dearly, demanding “diplomacy” with Russia while attacking the recent decision to allow the United States to deploy long-range missiles in Germany from 2026.
Scholz’s coalition of the centre-left Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberals was already heading to the polls, and each party had reason to fear the outcome of Sunday night’s vote.
Plagued by ideological differences and personal rivalries, the government has stumbled in recent months in implementing its major policy initiatives, including reviving the economy and bringing more electric vehicles to German roads. Greens co-leader Omid Nouripour recently described the Berlin coalition as a “transitional government” in the period following Merkel’s 16 years in power.
On Sunday, Nouripour assessed the election results, saying that the advance of the far right “is causing deep concern and fear among many people.”
