German Elections: AfD Breaks Through in Thuringia, Closely Follows CDU in Saxony

Sensational but predictable results of local elections in two states of East Germany, the former GDR. The German far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) party, led by Björn Höcke, is breaking through in Thuringia and is only a few votes behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Saxony.

In the federal state of Thuringia, the AfD received 32.8% of the vote, or +9.4% compared to the previous local elections. The Christian Democratic Union came in second, trailing by almost 10%, with 23.6% of the vote. The new left-wing party Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) also had an excellent result, coming in third with 15.8% of the vote, followed by the Left Party (Die Linke) with 13.1% of the vote.

However, it is a setback for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), which managed to get just over 6% of voter preference. Both the Greens and the Liberal Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) remained “out of parliament” in Thuringia, receiving a paltry 3.2% and 1.1% of the vote respectively.

According to the German press, “Thuringia’s new State Parliament has 88 seats. The vote will result in 32 going to the AfD, 23 to the CDU, 15 to the BSW, 12 to the Left, and 6 to the SPD.” Without the AfD, a majority of 45 seats can only be obtained with a coalition – quite hard to imagine – comprising CDU, BSW, and the Left.

In the state of Saxony, the CDU emerged as the leading party with 31.9% of the vote, ahead of the Alternative for Germany, which received 30.6% of the vote. In third place is still Sahra Wagenknecht’s Union with a well-deserved 11.8 percent. Close behind, in fourth and fifth places respectively, are the Social Democratic Party (7.3%) and the Greens with 5.1% of voters’ preferences. The Liberal Democratic Party (FDP) remains outside the Saxon parliament with only 0.9 percent of the vote.

Without the Alternative for Germany, “it is impossible to form a stable government majority in the federal states of Thuringia and Saxony,” said Alice Weidel, one of the AfD leaders, immediately after the election results were announced. “The so-called anti-democratic cordon cannot be maintained. Without the AfD, only a left-wing majority is possible, which the voters don’t want. If the CDU and BSW were to form a coalition with the left-wing parties in Thuringia, they would lose their credibility in the long term, and the fact that the AfD has 30% of the electorate cannot be ignored,” Weidel said.

For his part, Tino Chrupalla, another AfD leader, said he sees “a clear mandate from voters” for his party’s participation in the respective regional governments of Thuringia and Saxony after Sunday’s vote. “The will of the voters must be respected. The AfD is ready to discuss possible alliances with other parties that want to successfully govern Thuringia and Saxony,” said Chrupalla, according to whom “these historic results have clearly shown that voters want a change in politics.” For Chrupalla, “it is important that the Greens, Germany’s most dangerous party, are at least out of the Thuringian parliament.”

The results of the vote in the federal states of Thuringia and Saxony are “particularly bitter” for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said “all democratic parties are now obliged to form stable governments without right-wing extremists. Our country cannot and should not get used to all this. The AfD is wreaking havoc in Germany. It weakens the economy, divides society, and destroys our country’s reputation,” the chancellor said.

According to Michael Roth, president of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the results of local elections in Germany are “a real disaster for the democratic center.” According to Roth, “the fact that nationalists and populists of the left and right can form a majority is a wake-up call for all democratic forces.”

Germany’s Central Council of Jews (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, ZJD) also said it was “horrified” by the results of regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony. “More and more people are voting for the Alternative for Germany because of their political convictions,” wrote ZJD president Josef Schuster in the German newspaper Bild, according to which “Germany is wavering. Will we be able to recover from this heavy blow? A free society must not fall, especially in the face of Islamic terrorism.”

The leaders of the “small parties” in Thuringia and Saxony must now work creatively to build two strong and lasting political coalitions. The CDU rejects the hypothesis of a government with the AfD: as CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann stated, his party “rules out any type of cooperation” with the Alternative for Germany. “We’re very, very clear about that,” Linnemann said. For the leader of the CDU Thuringia, Mario Voigt, the projections of the regional election results represent a mandate for the Christian Democrats to form a government: “We as CDU also see this as an opportunity for political change under CDU leadership,” Voigt said, adding that “we are ready to form a reasonable government in Thuringia led by the CDU.”

And the future actions of the party led by Sahra Wagenknecht, which has ruled out a bloc with the AfD, remain unknown: “Björn Höcke has an ethnic outlook and is therefore a thousand miles away. We have always said we cannot cooperate with them,” Wagenknecht said, adding, however, that there may be common ground on some issues. “To consider every position of the AfD as wrong because it is taboo has only served to strengthen it,” the BSW leader said.