The far-right AfD party alone won a third of the votes in two eastern German states on Sunday, as residents of Thuringia and Saxony begin to take stock of the results.
As the Alternative for Germany (AfD) celebrated its historical win, hundreds marched through the streets of Erfurt on Sunday night amid news that a far-right party has won a state election for the first time since Nazis ruled over Germany.
Some Erfurt residents were too sceptical of the media to speak on camera but told Euronews that their votes were a “last resort”.
Their main motivation for voting was safety concerns made worse by a slate of knife crimes, they said, including a deadly attack in Solingen claimed by the so-called Islamic State group, which dominated the news ahead of the election.
“This election has shown that Germany has, in a way, become normal in the sense that right-wing populists, who are strong everywhere else in Europe, are also asserting themselves strongly in Germany,” Dr Sven Leunig, a political scientist from the Thuringia-based University of Jena, told Euronews.
“And it’s not just the AfD. The (leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) BSW also holds populist positions that are quite similar in many ways.”
In Thuringia, none of the established parties managed to secure an absolute majority or even a coalition majority, and the main question remains whether the AfD can form a coalition with the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) or the conservative CDU.
However, the CDU has publicly ruled out a collaboration with the hard right, while Wagenknecht herself promised not to form a coalition with the AfD under Thuringia state leader Bjorn Hoecke, who has already been fined for using Nazi slogans.
“This means that the CDU, as the second-strongest party, must form a new alliance with Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) and will also need the SPD. And even if these three come together, which is already unusual, there still wouldn’t be a stable majority because they only have 44 votes, but they need 45,” Dr Leunig explained.
“In Saxony, the situation is a bit different but also similar. The CDU has to form an alliance with the BSW because the previous coalition partners aren’t enough,” he added.
The main issue facing BSW, which was established only months ago after splitting from the left-wing Die Linke party, is that it has only a handful of members.
“If they want to govern, they need to appoint ministers, and those ministers have to come from somewhere. The only idea left is to appoint non-party ministers. But even then, they need staff like state secretaries,” he said.
“So, there’s a large administrative apparatus that the BSW doesn’t currently have. Some speculate that the BSW’s demands, like opposing arms shipments or new weapons, were made to ensure they don’t have to join the coalition.”
Would a ‘stricter policies to sway voters’ strategy work?
Even if the AfD doesn’t manage to form a coalition in Thuringia, it’s clear the other parties will begin to adopt stricter policies in a bid to win back disillusioned voters.
“Their main influence lies in pushing certain topics that differ from the federal government’s stance and can pressure the ruling parties,” Dr Leunig said.
“Even the AfD, from the opposition, can create political change without being directly in government. This is similar to the Greens two decades ago. They weren’t in government for nearly 20 years, but their constant focus on environmental issues forced other parties to adopt green policies to win back votes. This is a similar situation,” he added.
Under the populists, laws could become stricter, and deportations would become more common. But this might backfire, as many countries are not keen on taking back criminals, so it’s not easy to deport them — a lesson learned from similar attempts by the CDU and SPD for the last 16 years.
“There are limits, of course, because for deportation, the receiving country must agree. If the deportee has no identification, they can’t be accepted.”
“No one wants them, not even their own country,” Dr Leunig highlighted.
Regarding the biggest losers of Sunday’s elections, Dr Leunig said the liberal FDP party did the worst.
“This is very clear, and one can only say that it’s a direct result of their policies in Berlin, particularly their negative and blocking tactics.”
“They always tried to push through their own positions or blocked others from succeeding, which led to this fractured image. You can only hope that the FDP learns the right lesson and decides to work with the coalition rather than against it,” he concluded.
