The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party is currently leading in polls in both Saxony and Thuringia.
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Voters in two former East German states go to the polls Sunday (September 1, 2024) in elections expected to deal a blow to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government and deliver big gains for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The polls in Thuringia and Saxony come just over a week after three people were killed in a suspected Islamist attack, which has fuelled a bitter debate over immigration in Germany.

Opinion polls have the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead in Thuringia and a close second in Saxony, while also predicting a strong showing for the upstart, far-left political party, Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW).

Also Read: Germany’s far right gets a boost from past traumas haunting industrial east

The two parties have found a receptive audience in the eastern states for their criticism of the Government in Berlin and of military aid to Ukraine.

An election victory for the AfD would be a landmark in Germany’s post-war history and represent a rebuke for Mr. Scholz ahead of national elections in 2025.

In both states, Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats are polling around six percent, while their coalition partners, the Greens and the liberal FDP, lag even further behind.

Also Read: Olaf Scholz promises new weapons controls after Germany knife attack

But even if the AfD does come out on top in the elections, it is unlikely to come to power because other parties have ruled out working with the far right to form a Government.

Voting in both regional elections will start at 8:00 am local time (06:00 GMT), with polling stations closing at 6:00 p.m.

Far-right rise

The ballot-counting will start immediately after voting ends, with the first exit polls expected shortly after.

Created in 2013 as an Anti-Euro group before morphing into an anti-immigration party, the AfD has capitalised on the fractious three-way coalition in Berlin to rise in the polls.

In June’s EU Parliament elections, the party scored a record 15.9% overall and did especially well in eastern Germany, where it emerged as the biggest force.

Saxony is the most populous of the former East German states and has been a conservative stronghold since reunification.

Thuringia meanwhile is more rural and the only state currently led by far-left Die Linke, a successor of East Germany’s ruling communist party.

Also Read: Far-left rebel seeking peace with Vladimir Putin rocks German politics

A third former East German state, Brandenburg, is also due to hold an election later in September, where polls have the AfD ahead on around 24%.

The picture in each state is slightly different but “in any case, it is clear that the AfD will unite a very strong number of votes behind it”, Marianne Kneuer, a professor of politics at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden), told AFP.

New challenger

The AfD has found stronger support in the east where more voters “identify with its nationalist and authoritarian positions” and many are dissatisfied with the mainstream parties, according to Ms. Kneuer.

The same currents have fed support for BSW, founded in January by the firebrand politician Sahra Wagenknecht after she quit Die Linke.

Like the AfD, Ms. Wagenknecht and her party have made hay with a dovish stance towards Russia and calls for a radical crackdown on immigration.

BSW scored an immediate success in June’s European elections, hauling in some six percent of the German vote, and is polling a strong third in Saxony and Thuringia.

Other parties’ refusal to work with the AfD leaves BSW as potentially the kingmaker in Thuringia and Saxony, despite serious policy disagreements with potential partners — especially on Ukraine.

The run-up to polling day in Saxony and Thuringia has however been dominated by outcry over immigration stirred up by the deadly stabbing in the western city of Solingen.

The alleged attacker, a 26-year-old Syrian man with suspected links to the Islamic State group, was slated for deportation but evaded attempts by authorities to remove him.

The government has sought to respond to the alarm caused by the incident by announcing stricter knife controls and rules for migrants in Germany illegally.

The conservative CDU, which holds hopes of winning both elections, has said the initial measures do not go far enough and urged a halt to arrivals from Syria and Afghanistan.

Nordhausen, Germany:

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Sunday lost a tight mayoral race where the party had been tipped to secure the office of city mayor for the first time. 

The AfD’s candidate Joerg Prophet was defeated by independent incumbent Kai Buchmann in a run-off vote that put the spotlight on the city of Nordhausen in the former East German state of Thuringia.

The prospect of a win for the far-right party was described as a “catastrophe” by the keepers of a nearby concentration camp memorial ahead of the ballot.

Around 60,000 prisoners were held in the Mittelbau-Dora slave labour camp — a sub-camp of the notorious Buchenwald — only 6 km (four miles) from central Nordhausen.

They were forced to make V-2 rockets in brutal underground conditions, with around one in three worked to death.

An AfD mayor would not have been welcome at commemorative events at the site’s memorial, Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, told AFP.

‘Weight lifted’

“The AfD is an extreme right-wing party whose ideology is congruent or at least very similar in many areas to the ideology of the National Socialists,” he said.

Prophet looked confident ahead of the vote, flashing a brilliant white grin to passers-by at his campaign stand in the small but prosperous city.

The 61-year-old argued he represented a fresh start for Nordhausen after six-year incumbent Buchmann had fallen out of favour with many residents after repeatedly clashing with the city council.

Like many members of the far-right party, Prophet has been accused of extremism and historical revisionism.

In a blog post in 2020, he claimed the Allied forces that liberated the Mittelbau-Dora camp were only interested in snooping on the site’s rocket and missile technology.

He also called for an end to Germany’s Schuldkult, or “guilt cult”, a reference to the country’s efforts to remember and learn from the Holocaust.

But in the end, Prophet failed to gather the support needed to become city mayor, collecting 45.1 percent of the vote. 

The result guaranteed a “normal life for Nordhausen”, Buchmann said after the outcome became clear.

With the result “a huge weight has been lifted”, Wagner told news channel NTV.

It made clear that “you cannot win elections with historical revisionism, with an attitude that downplays the suffering of concentration camp prisoners”, he said.

Regional tests

Nonetheless, right-wing extremist attitudes are becoming increasingly widespread in Germany, according to a survey published this week by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

Eight percent of Germans can now be classified as having clear right-wing extremist views, compared with two to three percent in previous years, the foundation said.

The AfD, created in 2013 as an anti-euro outfit before seizing on anger over mass migration to Germany, has had a string of successes of late.

The party secured its first district administrator position in June, also in Thuringia, and its first town mayor in July in neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt.

At the national level, recent opinion polls have put the party on 22 percent, above Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left SPD and only a few points behind the main opposition conservative party.

The AfD’s support is especially strong in Thuringia, where it is polling  around 34 percent, according to a recent survey by regional broadcaster MDR.

Thuringia will hold a vote for its regional parliament in September 2024, along with two other former East German states, Brandenburg and Saxony.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)