A far-right party is on track to win the most votes in a German election for the first time since the Second World War.
The radical Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which ran on nativist anti-immigrant populism, led Sunday’s election in the east German state of Thuringia with as much as 33 percent of the vote, according to multiple exit polls. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) fell to second place with 24.5 percent.
AfD was also tracking a close second place in the neighboring state of Saxony, just over a percent behind the CDU.
The AfD’s gains come despite a series of damaging scandals in recent months. Mass protests erupted earlier this year after German investigative outlet Correctiv revealed party officials had met with a group of right-wing extremists to discuss plans to deport millions of immigrants, including German citizens.
The AfD was even too much for the pan-European Identity and Democracy (ID) group of far-right parties that sit together in the European Parliament. The ID expelled the party in May after one of its lead candidates in the European elections told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.”
That same month, Björn Höcke, the AfD’s lead candidate in Thuringia, was hit with a criminal conviction for flirting with Nazi rhetoric. A court fined him 13,000 euros ($14,000) for using the Sturmabteilung (a Nazi paramilitary group also known as the Brownshirts) motto “Alles fur Deutschland,” or “Everything for Germany,” at a 2021 campaign rally.
Speaking to his supporters Sunday in Erfurt, the Thuringia state capital, Höcke indicated his party is willing to work in coalition with others following the election results. “We are ready to take government responsibility,” he said.
It’s almost certain, however, that the AfD won’t come to power—as all the other major parties have said they will not work with them.
A data analysis of German elections since 1994 undertaken by the newspaper Die Tageszeitung showed the entire country has moved to the right in recent decades, but that the swing has been especially strong in the formerly communist eastern states like Thuringia and Saxony. In 1998, right-wing parties had just five percent of the vote in East Germany, the paper reported.
