Far-right party heading for best result in German election since World War II

A far-right party could hold the balance of power in Germany after sweeping to second place in a historic election. Exit polls, issued after voting ended, suggest AfD (Alternative for Germany) – a party under intelligence service surveillance as a suspected extremist organisation – has won around 20% of the vote.

Called after the collapse of the Social Democrat-led coalition, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling party is expected to drop to third place. It is a ‘historic defeat’, the party’s general secretary concedes. The left-wing populist, socially conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), formed in part due to opposition to immigration, appears on track to win seats in its first federal election.

Meanwhile the Free Democrats, who pulled the plug on the government, may barely scrape the 5% required to win seats, if they do at all. With the right-wing CDU and CSU bloc emerging far ahead on 29%, any government is almost certain to be led by their leader Friedrich Merz. He has already declared victory.

‘The world out there is not waiting for us, nor is it waiting for lengthy coalition talks and negotiations’, he told supporters in Berlin. ‘We must now quickly regain our ability to act so that we can do the right thing at home, so that we are once again present in Europe, so that the world can see that Germany is being governed reliably again.’.

Merz’s messaging towards the AfD has been murky. He has previously declared ‘we will not with with the AfD’ who stand ‘against everything that our country and our party built’. Even after nearly passing a bill to toughen immigration measures with the support of the AfD – a move that brought thousands onto the streets in protest – Merz responded to criticism by saying: ‘A right decision doesn’t become wrong just because the wrong people agree to it.’.

But when his recent speech in the eastern city of Halle was interrupted by a heckler accusing him of doing deals with Nazis, Merz responded by saying he wouldn’t be silenced by claims of fascism. That co-operation with the AfD would even be a question was previously unthinkable due to mainstream parties’ refusal to work with the far-right.

But growing support for the AfD, particularly in the economically deprived former East Germany, and growing opposition to immigration, has changed that. Lines drawn between parties has left little room to maneuver. Merz’s CDU has celebrated the demise of the so-called ‘traffic light coalition’ of the Social Democratic Party, Greens and Free Democrats.

His Bavarian partners, the CSU, have all but ruled out working with the Greens, who exit polls put around 13%, slightly below their 2021 result. The Left Party, on 9%, will not work with the CDU and lacks the numbers to build a coalition with the Social Democrats and Greens.

And Scholz, who conceded defeat on Sunday, remains firmly opposed to working with the AfD. Despite achieving their worst election performance since 1887, the Social Democrats are still perhaps Merz’s most likely coalition candidates. The CDU-CSU, known as Union, and the Social Democrats governed Germany together as the ‘Grand Coalition’ from 2005 to 2009, and again from 2013 to 2021.

But that was under the leadership of Angela Merkel, who was far more welcoming of migrants than Merz, who she froze out of cabinet during her 16-year-rule. Still, the two parties have formed coalitions in five of the 16 state parliaments, while the CDU has partnered with the Greens in three. This suggests the firewall locking the AfD out of power may still hold.

Decrying that ‘an extreme right-wing party like the AfD is getting such election results’, he said: ‘That must never be something that we will accept. I will not accept it and never will…. No cooperation with the extreme right.’. But the AfD is feeling emboldened, and not just by these latest results – more than double their previous result, and the highest for a far-right party since Adolf Hitler’s Nazis topped the poll in 1933.

‘Our hand remains outstretched to form a government’, party leader Alice Weidel said this evening. In a campaign dominated by the issue of migration, the AfD issued flyers resembling ‘deportation tickets’. Despite being a lesbian with a Sri Lankan partner, party leader Alice Weidel has advocated for the mass deportation of people with migrant backgrounds.

Her name has found its way into a popular slogan of the party’s supporters – ‘Alice for Deutschland’ – after its leader in Thuringia, Bjorn Höcke, was fined last year for using the banned Nazi phrase ‘Alles für Deutschland’, meaning ‘everything for Germany’.

The former history teacher pleaded ignorance of its origins. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. For more stories like this, check our news page. Arrow MORE: Teen suspect in stabbing Holocaust memorial ‘planned for weeks to kill Jews’.