The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will be the second largest party in the Bundestag after it secured almost 21% of the vote in Germany’s federal election on Sunday. The AfD will likely be kept out of government by the number 1 and the number 3 parties in parliament, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/ Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) respectively. Yet, the performance of the party that has long been treated as untouchable by the political mainstream marks a dramatic shift in the political landscape of Germany — the AfD has doubled its vote share from 10.4% in 2021. The AfD won 36.2% of the vote in eastern Germany, and 18% in the west (see map). While it has got votes in almost every constituency in this election, the party has traditionally enjoyed greater popularity in the east of the country — in areas that made up the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) before the reunification. Why? AfD and its ideology Formed in 2013, the AfD started out as a party that opposed Germany bailing out other countries, mainly Greece, during the eurozone crisis. It won 4.7% of the vote in the election of that year. The AfD has since adopted various far right, populist, and nativist positions, opposing migrants, especially Muslim migrants, rejecting climate action, and arguing that Germany suffered from excessive guilt for Nazi-era atrocities. Its campaign message in the current election focused on immigration control and deportations, abandoning the euro, leaving the NATO alliance, and returning to nuclear energy. The party has also opposed Germany sending more aid to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. AfD’s support base The AfD’s message has resonated especially in the former East Germany, whose economy has historically been worse off than the West, and whose younger population often moves to the west in search of better education and job opportunities. This disparity is to a large extent the product of the east’s specific needs not getting enough attention after reunification in 1990. Resentment against former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of spending money on helping other European countries — when many of Germany’s own citizens needed attention and aid — was the highest in the east. The economic gap has persisted, and as the ageing population of the east finds itself at odds with the more multicultural, prosperous, and younger west, the AfD has capitalised on the discontent. It has also sought to portray the east as more authentically German than the mixed-up west. In 2014, the AfD, then a very new outfit, won seven seats in the European Parliament. In September 2015, it won 12.2% of the vote in Brandenburg, 10.6% in Thuringia, and 9.7% in Saxony, all in the former East Germany. Last year, the AfD won almost a third of the vote in Thuringia, the first win for a far right party in a German state parliament election since World War II. Beyond the economy The AfD’s message about immigrants stealing the jobs of local people and altering German life and culture is more popular in the east. So is its stand on climate action. But some experts say that economic factors explain the AfD’s popularity in the formerly communist region only in part. “In its election campaigns, the AfD very effectively tapped into an experience that is widely shared among east Germans. That you don’t make yourself heard through voting, by engaging yourself in political parties, civic groups or unions, but by mobilising the masses for street protests,” GDR-born historian Christina Morina told The Guardian. Also, it has been argued that West Germany worked harder on moving away from the country’s Nazi past, and thus became more resistant to far right ideologies. The East German regime, on the other hand, tended to treat the postwar socialist state as a new beginning altogether, a clear break from fascism. Yet other experts see the success of the AfD as consistent with the rise of the right in much of Europe — to them, the resistance to the far right in the west appears as a more remarkable phenomenon than its gains in the east.
