A far-right party has won a state election for the first time in post-World War II Germany in the country’s east and looked set to finish a very close second in another.
The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 32.8 percent of the vote in Thuringia — well ahead of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the main national opposition party, with 23.6 percent, in Sunday’s regional elections.
The far-right party is almost certain to be excluded from power by cooperation between rival parties. Meanwhile, the poor showing by parties from the centre-left coalition led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz is likely to increase tension within the government.
As well as the victory in the southeastern state of Thuringia, the AfD put in a strong showing in neighbouring Saxony. The count on Monday morning showed that the CDU, which has led the state since German reunification in 1990, had won the vote, but it only just edged out the AfD.
“Filled with pride,” senior AfD leader Bjoern Hoecke declared on Sunday. “Ready to take on the responsibilities of governing.”
Hoecke has been known for his inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants and Islam, emerging as one of the most radical and prominent leaders of AfD in recent years.
“An openly right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in a state parliament for the first time since 1949, and that causes many people very deep concern and fear,” said Omid Nouripour, a leader of the Greens, one of the national governing parties.
The left, populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which like the AfD demands sharper controls on immigration and wants to stop arming Ukraine, came third in both states, though significantly underperformed earlier polls.
With a year to go until Germany’s national election, the results look punishing for Scholz’s coalition.
While his Social Democrats looked to have cleared the 5 percent threshold for staying in the parliaments of both states, coalition partners, the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats, look less secure.
The development could herald yet more conflict in Scholz’s fractious coalition government. Some members of the coalition parties have already used the results to question the legitimacy of the government.
‘Historic success’
Despite winning a third of seats in Thuringia’s legislature, the AfD is unlikely to come to power, as other parties have said they will refuse to work with it to form a governing majority.
Regardless, Alice Weidel, national co-leader of AfD, told ARD television that her party’s victory was “a historic success”, describing the result as a “requiem” for Scholz’s coalition.
The chancellor, meanwhile, urged mainstream parties to maintain the firewall against the AfD.
“All democratic parties are now called upon to form stable governments without right-wing extremists” Scholz said on Facebook, calling the results in Thuringia and Saxony “bitter” and “worrying”.
Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said AfD’s lead in Thuringia, is a personal mandate for the party’s leader in the region, Hocke.
“The irony here is that in winning this election…if he was from any other party, then he would be in a position to be making deals, trying to get into the [national] government. Yet he is as far from government now… as he was before voting actually took place,” Kane said.
Kane said that in Saxony it appears that the CDU have just held on to first place but added that the results could still fluctuate.
“The thing to take from this is that the turnout in both states, was much higher than the last time…. and the shift is rightward,” Kane said.
‘Political turnaround through Germany’
The votes in Thuringia and Saxony came just over a week after three people were killed in a knife attack that has refuelled a bitter debate over immigration in Germany.
Saxony is the most populous of the former East Germany states and has been a conservative stronghold since reunification. Thuringia is more rural and the only state currently led by the far-left Die Linke, a successor of East Germany’s ruling communist party.
Al Jazeera’s Kane noted that some of the people voting in the states had lived under communism 35 years ago.
Casting her vote early in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, Sandra Pagel had told the AFP news agency on Sunday that she was “really afraid” of a victory for the AfD.
“I’m very nervous to see what happens today … because I think there’s a very high risk that the AfD will win and that scares me. For my grandchildren and also for me,” said the 46-year-old sterilisation processing facility manager.
“I just hope that we get a coalition that is democratic and not right-wing at the end,” Naila Kiesel told the Reuters news agency after casting her ballot in the city of Jena in Thuringia.
Created in 2013 as an anti-euro group before morphing into an anti-immigration party, the AfD has capitalised on the fractious three-way coalition in Berlin to rise in opinion polls.
In June’s European Parliament elections, the party scored a record 15.9 percent overall and did especially well in eastern Germany, where it emerged as the biggest force.
