BERLIN (AP) — The far-right Alternative for Germany could become the favorite to win two eastern German state elections for the first time on Sunday, while a months-old party founded by prominent leftists also hopes to shake up a disputed and deeply unpopular central government.
Germany’s main opposition conservative party wants to suppress the Alternative for Germany in the states of Saxony, with about 4.1 million people, and Thuringia, with 2.1 million people. But the prospects for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government are bleak, with frequent internal disputes and a stagnant economy and other problems eroding voter support.
A victory for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) would send a strong signal to the party with just over a year until the next federal election. But it would likely need a coalition partner to govern, and it’s highly unlikely anyone else would agree to put it in power. Still, the party’s strength could make it extremely difficult to form new state governments.
The Berlin Problem
The strong support for the AfD and its new Zahra-Wagenknecht alliance, strongest in Germany’s former communist eastern region, is fuelled in part by dissatisfaction with the central government. Scholz’s alliance campaigned throughout June’s European elections, where it performed dismally. Internal divisions intensified during a summer plagued by disagreements over the 2025 budget.
Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats were already weak in the two states, but the first two are minority partners in both state governments and are now at risk of falling below the 5% support needed to remain in the state parliament.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently said “gunsmoke from the battlefield” was obscuring the success of his uneasy coalition government, which aims to modernize Germany. Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said the government was not a “self-help group.” Omid Nouripour, one of the Green party’s national leaders, described the coalition as a “caretaker government.”
The main opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has won the European Parliament elections. The CDU, which has led Saxony since German reunification in 1990, is hoping that Mayor Michael Kretschmer can again overtake the AfD as he did five years ago. In Thuringia, where it is lagging behind the AfD in opinion polls, it is hoping to form a coalition government.
Thuringia politics are especially complicated because Governor Bodo Ramelow’s Left party has lost steam in national elections. One of the state’s best-known figures, Mr. Wagenknecht, left it last year to form a new party that now has more support than the Left party.
Migration, War, and Peace
The AfD has capitalised on growing anti-immigration sentiment in the region, with election posters in Thuringia promising “summer, sun and re-migration” and featuring an aeroplane bearing the “Deportation-Hansa” logo.
AfD national leader Alice Weidel accused both the ruling party and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which led Germany under Angela Merkel, of “out-of-control mass immigration” following last week’s knife attack in Solingen in which a suspected Syrian militant killed three people.
Wagenknecht’s new party, known by its German acronym BSW, combines left-wing economic policies with immigration-sceptic policies, and the CDU has also stepped up pressure on the central government to take a tougher stance on immigration.
Germany’s stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine is also an issue in these eastern countries. Berlin is Ukraine’s second-largest arms supplier after the United States, something both the AfD and BSW oppose. “Peace is everything!” is the message on one AfD poster, combining German and Russian flags.
Wagenknecht has also criticised the German government and the recent decision by the US to start equipping Germany with long-range missiles in 2026. He has declared that his party will only cooperate with state governments that “take a clear stance on foreign affairs and against war preparations.”
Who will rule with whom?
Although the AfD won its first mayoral and county government posts last year, the party is yet to join a state government. “The sun of government responsibility must rise for us in the east,” national co-chair Tino Krupala said in June.
The AfD has little chance of winning in Saxony and Thuringia, where there are no coalition parties. National intelligence services have placed AfD chapters in both states under official surveillance as “proven right-wing extremist” groups. Thuringia’s AfD leader, Björn Höcke, was convicted of deliberately using Nazi slogans at a political event but is appealing the conviction.
Depending on the performance of the governing parties in each country, the CDU may have to search for unlikely coalition partners: It has long rejected working with Ramelow’s Left Party, a descendant of East German Communism, but has not ruled out cooperation with Wagenknecht’s BSW.
“We cannot work together with the AfD,” CDU national leader Friedrich Merz told the RND newspaper group.
“If that happens the CDU will disappear,” he said.
