Populist surge in Germany driven in part by war, economic backlash

Elections Sunday in the eastern states (Länder) of Saxony and Thuringia showed unprecedented levels of support for the right populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), as well as a strong performance for the new ‘left-conservative’ party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).

In a major historical breakthrough, a party on the far right has finished first in a state election in postwar Germany. In Thuringia, the AfD received nearly a third of the vote, followed by the center right Christian Democrats (CDU) at about a quarter, and the third-place BSW at almost 16%.

Prior to these elections, Thuringia had been the sole state government led by the post-communist Die Linke (Left) party whose support in these elections dropped to 13%. In Saxony, the CDU, which has headed the state government since reunification, retained its first-place position but only barely. The CDU won 32% versus 30.6% for AfD, with BSW in third place at 11.3% and SPD at 7.3%.

In both states, the CDU remains the champion of the national mainstream parties. Its state leaders — incumbent minister-president (governor) Michael Kretschmer in Saxony and party chairman Mario Voigt in Thuringia — have begun coalition talks, which will exclude AfD in both cases. A second precedent-setting outcome of these elections is the likely inclusion of BSW — a party formed only eight months ago — in a governing coalition member in these two states.

Kretschmer expressed confidence that a coalition of CDU with BSW and SPD can quickly be formed in Saxony, where these three parties together will have a majority of seats. The picture in Thuringia is cloudier. There the AfD leader is Björn Höcke, considered to be on the rightmost fringe of the AfD. The AfD party organizations in both Saxony and Thuringia are under legal scrutiny as suspected proponents of anti-constitutional extremism. Höcke has been found guilty and fined for purposely adopting a Nazi slogan at a rally.

Thuringia’s CDU leader Voigt hopes to draw BSW, SPD, and Greens into a coalition, but these four parties together would fall short of a majority. At a national level, CDU has long pledged never to govern with Die Linke, but it will have to come to some sort of cooperative arrangement with that party in Thuringia to be able to govern without AfD. The outgoing governor, Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke, is a relative moderate and has himself most recently governed with a minority coalition.

However, this solution is inherently fragile. A coalition composed of parties with sharply divergent policy preferences will run the risk of being unable to provide coherent leadership and therefore fail to attract away support from the AfD.

The elections confirmed the steep slide of all three of the parties in the national governing coalition: SPD, Greens and Free Democrats (FDP). The Greens slid substantially in Saxony, where they had been in the governing coalition led by the CDU. They failed to win any seats in Thuringia. The SPD cleared the 5% threshold for winning seats in both elections, but showed a marked decline from its previous levels of support. The FDP won no seats in either contest.

Both AfD and BSW are characterized as populist, one on the right and the other on the left. The core issues in priority order for AfD are immigration, the economy, and Ukraine. BSW’s antiwar stance on Ukraine is its most insistent political theme, followed by the weak economy, attributed in large part to the war. This argument has been a source of strength to BSW in Thuringia and Saxony, where polls have long shown wariness of escalation and support for opening negotiations to end the war.

While it would be an overstatement to characterize these elections as dominated by the Ukraine issue, this theme has been unusually salient, due mainly to the energetic personal involvement of BSW national leader Sahra Wagenknecht in the two campaigns. Politico called these elections a pro-Putin ‘coup’.

The long-standing concern of some voters about irregular immigration also shaped these elections, principally to the benefit of AfD. A knife attack killing three people at a city festival in Solingen in northwestern Germany on August 23 jolted immigration policy back to public prominence. The alleged perpetrator is a 26-year-old Syrian national whose asylum claim had been rejected.

While not as inflammatory as the AfD, the BSW also raised concerns about immigration, marking a sharp departure from the stance taken by Wagenknecht’s former party, Die Linke.

The public and media reaction to these election results oscillates between interpreting them as a uniquely eastern phenomenon or as a harbinger of destabilization not confined to the former East Germany (GDR). To put these elections in perspective, Saxony has a population of 4 million, while Thuringia is home to 2 million people. Germany’s population is almost 84 million. Elections in Brandenburg — another eastern state — will likely deepen the same anxieties.

Many commentators attribute these striking election results to the distinctive political culture of the former GDR, driven by disillusionment with the social and economic effects of reunification. Both AfD and BSW vote tallies are considerably higher than their standing in national polls, roughly 18% and 8% respectively.

It would not be wrong, however, to assume that AfD and BSW reconfigure election outcomes elsewhere in Germany. The dominance of established parties of the center left (SPD and Greens), center right CDU-CSU and the liberal Free Democrats is deteriorating, and this tendency is not confined to the eastern states.

The growing strength of AfD and BSW will complicate coalition formation after the national elections of October next year. The CDU is clearly the strongest party polling at just above 30% but the weakness of SPD, Greens and FDP will make it harder to continue to isolate AfD, even if BSW joins a national governing coalition.

BSW could also sharpen its demand to cease military support for Ukraine and its opposition to the proposed stationing of US medium range missiles on German territory.