The far right’s ‘historic’ election win is a body blow for the reunified Germany

AfD’s surge in German state elections is proof that, 30 years after the GDR’s demise, a distinct East German vote still exists – and xenophobia is not its only distinguishing factor, says Mary Dejevsky

Bjorn Hocke, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Thuringia, called his party’s success in state elections a ‘historic victory’ (DPA)

The elections that took place on Sunday, in two regions of Germany, amounted to a massive vote of no confidence in the governing coalition in Berlin, and brought the far right within touching distance of power in parts of Germany for the first time since the Second World War. But they were not just about immigration – though some had tried to make them so – and not just about Germany.

The state elections, for parliaments in Saxony and Thuringia, two regions in eastern Germany, were widely billed as the most important since reunification, and not in a good way.

Eve-of-poll projections boiled down to just two possibilities: an absolute worst-case scenario in which a far-right party was elected to exercise regional power, and a not quite so bad scenario in which Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) topped the polls, but not by so much that it could not be kept out of government by a coalition of other parties.

In the event, it was the second scenario that prevailed. AfD topped the poll in Thuringia and hailed a famous victory, with the centre-right CDU 10 points behind. The governing left-led coalition was trounced, but a CDU-led coalition can, and probably will, form the next government because all mainstream parties vowed not to share power with the AfD.

In Saxony, the governing CDU beat the AfD into second place, by just 1 per cent, and now faces difficult talks to form a new coalition.

The chief losers were the Greens, the free-market FDP, doubtless punished for being part of the governing national coalition, and the far-left party, Die Linke. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, retained enough of their vote not to fall below the 5 per cent threshold for representation in the regional parliaments, so saving chancellor Olaf Scholz from complete ignominy. The results could, however, point to a likely change of power in next year’s parliamentary elections, with a possible return of the centre right.

If the worst – at least as seen by an apprehensive German and European mainstream – was narrowly avoided, however, the overall picture is both more and less consoling than the raw figures might suggest. More consoling because there is less risk to the stability of German democracy, both regional and national, than had been feared. But it is less consoling because of the concerns that the voters expressed.

One reason why the AfD vote may have been lower than some had forecast – even in Thuringia, where AfD decisively topped the poll, it still received only 33 per cent – was the double-digit vote in both states for the seven-month-old party of Sahra Wagenknecht. An arch-leftist on economic issues, she also wants tougher limits on immigration and opposes the war in Ukraine, as does the AfD.

This combination probably drew voters away from several parties, including from the far left, but especially from the AfD. Brandenburg, a third state in eastern Germany, will go to the polls in three weeks, and a similar pattern could well emerge.

It is not clear how far Wagenknecht’s party could affect next year’s national election. She was born in (what was then) East Germany and her party polls more strongly in the former East than in the former West, raising questions about its national appeal. But both her anticipated success and the strength of AfD in the former East have generated much – often condescending – debate among German commentators about whether Ossis and Wessis would ever really see eye to eye, and even whether two Germanies might actually be moving further apart.

Such discussions, which presuppose some special malaise in the former East, and barely disguise a sense that former East German voters are somehow inferior in not having fully adapted to their “new” reality, tend to leave out some big factors that have little to do with the “East German” experience, and quite a lot to do with demography in the eastern states, and with simple geography.

Hostility to immigration may be higher than in some of Germany’s western states for all sorts of reasons, including what was and was not taught in East German schools. But it might also be, as some argue, that more unskilled migrants have been settled in the east than in the west, because housing is cheaper and there is a shortage of labour and people.

And while immigration may have loomed large in the election campaign, voters also had other concerns. One was the war in Ukraine – which both Wagenknecht and AfD want to end, for which they received loud cheers at their rallies. Polls show opposition to the war, and to German help, especially military help, to be much higher in former East Germany than in former West Germany.

But this could have less to do with any specifically East German experience, still less – as some have charged – with any friendly feelings towards Russia, than with economics (they fear money is being diverted from still necessary rebuilding in their regions) and geography. The eastern German states are much closer to the war in Ukraine, and to Russia, than the rest of Germany. In Dresden, for instance, you can sense that proximity from the street names: Prague, Budapest, Vienna, and the like.

To brand Germany’s eastern states as either uniquely xenophobic or unpatriotic because they vote in higher numbers for AfD may be dismissing as bigoted ignorance some not irrational resentments and fears. It is also worth noting that by far the loudest cheers at the rallies I went to were not for curbs on migration or ending the Ukraine war, though both were popular, but for the failure of successive governments in Berlin to recognise the sacrifices made by East Germans and the efforts they had put into rebuilding their own states.

To that extent, there may well be a distinct East German vote, even now, more than 30 years after the GDR’s demise. But it is not distinguished only by xenophobia. Which highlights something else that shone through this election campaign: the extent to which voters’ concerns are shared beyond national or regional borders. The plethora of posters festooning city streets showed concerns that were identical to those voiced by voters in those European countries which have recently held elections, such as France and the UK, and by many Americans going into their presidential campaign.

Affordable housing, the cost of living, wages needing to keep pace with prices, as well as a desire for law and order, personal safety and national security. Opposition to immigration and the failure of newcomers to integrate is just a part of this, but highlighted in this campaign because of the killings in the western city of Solingen by a Syrian asylum seeker only 10 days before the poll.

How to address such an atrocity became a set piece of every candidate’s campaign speech, across Germany’s very wide political spectrum. The Scholz government talked of toughening the asylum system, arranged the first repatriation flight to Afghanistan since the return to power of the Taliban, and mooted a plan to deny benefits to asylum seekers arriving from another EU country. This, from a centre-left government, was a far cry indeed from Angela Merkel’s response to the 2015 refugee crisis: “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”).

When Thuringia and Saxony voted on Sunday, their votes surely reflected specific regional concerns, accentuated, for some, by their East German experience. But many of their concerns are also widely shared, not just by their fellow Germans, and branding them misguided or wrong – as many critics have done – is a perilous path to go down.

Speaking on a visit to Germany last week, Keir Starmer said the UK had to be “alive to the challenge of a similar party” to the German AfD arising in the UK, and regretted that what he called progressive parties had not found an answer to the rise of the far right. That may be true, but Germany’s proportional system and its broad range of political parties gives people a better chance that their concerns will reach those in power than in, for instance, the UK, where – as we have seen so graphically – resentments may be largely hidden before being whipped up into disorder on the streets.