Could mainstream German parties coalesce with the AfD?

For the second time in three weeks, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has received a significant percentage of the votes at a state election in eastern Germany. The far-right party won 30 percent of the votes in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin. Given the polls going into Sunday, the AfD might even be disappointed that it did not place first, rather than second behind the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Even though the SPD won by a slight margin, the pressure on the federal government led by Olaf Scholz and the Social Democrats may increase further in the coming weeks. In the lead-up to the elections, tensions within the SPD rose. Dietmar Woidke, the SPD’s state president, did not want to appear together with Scholz during election campaign events. Hence, Scholz traveled independently through Brandenburg, where he won his seat in the Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament, in 2021. At the same time, the pressure on Saskia Esken, the co-chairwoman of the SPD, has risen and her resignation from her post has become a realistic scenario.

At some point, German voters might ditch the mainstream parties for good

Three weeks before the election in Brandenburg, the AfD won the state election in Thuringia and scored second in Saxony. The party is performing well in the eastern parts of the country where dissatisfaction with mainstream parties has grown the most in the past decade or so. After the unification of Germany in 1990, the regions formerly belonging to the GDR tended to be more open to fringe parties, with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor of the autocratic Socialist Unity Party (SED), regularly winning votes in the double digits and even the ultranationalist National Democratic Party (NPD) getting seats in state parliaments. The recent rise of the AfD could turn out to be a major turning point in the political history of unified Germany.

Still, the AfD remains a party on the fringes. Observing the scenery on the ground following the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia earlier this month, it was striking how rarely anyone seemed happy with the party’s success at the ballot boxes. And rarely anyone would openly confess to having elected the AfD. It was somewhat reminiscent of the 1990s in eastern Germany when barely anyone confessed their support of the PDS.

The state elections in Saxony and Thuringia have already caused two fascinating developments in the political scenery of Germany. First, the federal government under Chancellor Scholz has introduced border controls to battle irregular immigration. Second, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) entered negotiations with the SPD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) to form a coalition in Thuringia, which has caused members of the AfD in that state to be enraged about a potential scenario in which the party will not govern despite winning the most votes. It is certainly a risk for the CDU to form a government involving the BSW, but given that both the Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens did not win any seats in the state elections, even though they are part of the federal government, the options for the CDU as the second-strongest party in Thuringia are very limited.

Wagenknecht managed to essentially destroy her previous party, called the Left, which has led the most recent government in Thuringia, by ending her membership and forming her own party. Wagenknecht’s newly formed outfit has adopted anti-immigration policies and promoted a conservative worldview. At the same time, Wagenknecht still represents socialist positions in socio-economic matters. Under normal circumstances, the CDU would not seriously negotiate with Wagenknecht and her political companions, but currently, the BSW seems like the lesser evil to the mainstream parties.

Before the most recent elections, questions regarding a potential collaboration with the AfD had been answered ambiguously or not at all by leaders of the CDU. Some political commentators tend to call the current status quo, in which no mainstream party is engaged in a coalition with the AfD, a “firewall.” For the time being, it seems that no one dares to tear down this wall, and the election result in Brandenburg would allow the SPD, CDU and BSW to form a coalition there, too.

More importantly, the governing parties in Berlin and the CDU need to figure out how to win some voters back. A majority of votes for the AfD come from Germans who want to show dissatisfaction with normal politics, but at some point, these voters might be lost for the mainstream parties for good.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.