The latest nationwide polling results are shocking to many Germans. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) worships Vladimir Putin, hates immigrants and uses the Federal Republic’s democracy to fight it. It has Nazis in its ranks. Recently, a scandal broke when reports about a corruption scheme surfaced. According to those, some of the AfD’s state parliament and Bundestag members employed each other’s parents, siblings, spouses and girlfriends.
None of those aspects seem to have hurt the AfD’s standing among German voters. Actually, the opposite is the case. The more scandals are uncovered, and the more Nazi slogans Björn Höcke, the party’s chairman in the state of Thuringia, uses in public, the more the support increases. The fact that Höcke was convicted for saying “Alles für Deutschland”, just like members of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA) did in the thirties and forties, does not seem to prevent voters from casting their ballot for the AfD either.
According to the latest YouGov poll German-language media cited on Tuesday, the AfD stands at 29 percent, while the conservative CDU and its Bavarian version CSU slumped. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s union parties now stand at 20 percent. His center-left coalition partner, the SPD, is being supported by only 12 percent of respondents.
Extremist Endeavor
Even the Greens look better than the Social Democrats, since they stand at 14 percent. The left-wing extremist Die Linke is at the SPD’s level right now and the center-right FDP would actually pass the 5-percent threshold again if elections took place today. Sure, a lot can happen before the next Bundestag elections, which are scheduled to take place in the fall of 2029, but what if Merz’s coalition falls apart? What if the trend is not reversed soon?
In May of last year, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution officially categorized the AfD as a right-wing extremist endeavor. Since the party filed a suit against the decision, the categorization was temporarily suspended, until there is a final ruling. In five of Germany’s sixteen federal states, namely Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, the AfD officially is right-wing extremist.
In spite of it all, 42 percent of adult inhabitants in Saxony-Anhalt intend to vote for the AfD in state elections that are less than three months away. With that kind of support, the extremists could reach an outright majority in September and take over the state government in Magdeburg. Some Germans believe the AfD would not have the kind of power it would need to damage this country’s democracy by running a state government. Others disagree.
Worrying Minorities
If or once Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s chairman in Saxony-Anhalt, is Minister President (governor), he intends to dump compulsory school attendance, deport immigrants and take on public service broadcasting by cancelling the treaty that regulates it. Even though he would do so on the state level, he would cause a lot of damage. Siegmund allegedly was part of the AfD’s recent nepotism scandal, but his supporters do not seem to care at all.
Now that the right-wing extremists are taking off in the nationwide polls as well, members of minorities worry. They include immigrants from Turkey, Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East, including those who have become German citizens, Jews and LGBTQI people. But also democrats who may not be part of any minority fear this country might face difficult times.
For years, politicians of democratic parties have said the country should fight the AfD by discussing the “real issues”, by excluding them from public discussion panels or talk shows, by ignoring them or by setting up a cordon sanitaire. None of it worked. Proceedings to prohibit the AfD have not led to anything either.
Is the Federal Republic lost? We probably won’t know until it is.
