In the more populous state of Saxony, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) appears, for now, to have just staved off the far right, coming in first with around 31 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll, with the AfD trailing close behind.
A new populist-left party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), is set to finish third in both states, according to the early projections.
The surge of parties on the extremes of the political spectrum is likely to be seen as another blow to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s already weak, tripartite coalition government.
The three coalition parties — Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) — suffered losses, according to early projections. In Thuringia, the Greens and the FDP appear to have both crashed out of the state parliament, failing to meet the five-percent threshold necessary to gain seats, according to the early projections.
Despite the AfD’s strong performance, the party is unlikely to take real governing power. All other parties set to make it into the state parliaments have refused to govern in coalitions with the AfD.
The populist-left BSW, led by Sahra Wagenknecht, a former member of the East German Communist Party, merges traditionally right-wing stances on immigration and other social issues with a traditionally left-wing economic and welfare policies. Given the fractured political landscape in both states, it’s likely that BSW will play a kingmaker role when it comes to forming coalitions in the state parliaments of both eastern states.
The surge in support for the AfD comes despite the fact that state-level domestic intelligence authorities tasked with monitoring anti-constitutional groups in both Thuringia and Saxony have classified the local branches of the party as extremist organizations that aim to undermine German democracy.
In Thuringia, the party is led by Björn Höcke, considered one of the most extreme politicians in the party and someone who has twice been found guilty by a German court of purposely employing Nazi rhetoric.