German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed optimism Friday that support for a far-right party which has been surging in the polls lately will shrink to previous levels again by the time of the next national election in 2025.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party received 10.3% of the vote in the last national election in 2021 — a slight decline from 2017, when it got 12.6% in the wake of the European migration crisis. Recent polls have shown support for the party, known by its German acronym AfD, at around 20% and ahead of Scholz's center-left Social Democrats.
“I'm quite confident that AfD won't perform much differently at the next federal election than it did at the last,” Scholz told reporters at his annual summer news conference in Berlin.
The 65-year-old said his strategy to achieve this is to pursue policies “that give citizens enough reasons to believe in a good future" — including by showing that the country is in control of its borders and can curb irregular migration.
Scholz also appealed to mainstream parties in Germany's 16 states to keep the consequences of their rivalry in mind. Some of those regions will hold state elections this year and in 2024 , which are seen as key bellwethers for the next national election.
He argued that the “democratic parties” and their supporters make up a broad majority in every state and that there has been no "normalization” of far-right ideology in mainstream society.
