‘Stark rejection’: How Germany’s far-right AfD won key election in the east

In a first for the far right since World War II, the party won the state of Thuringia, riding on lingering grievances from the past.

A far-right party’s stunning win in Germany’s regional elections over the weekend highlights a deepening divide between the country’s east and west, analysts say, reflecting eastern Germans’ frustration over feeling overlooked and dismissed by their western compatriots.

On Sunday, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) won elections in the eastern state of Thuringia with 32.8 percent of the vote, a first for a far-right party since World War II. It performed strongly in neighbouring Saxony too, trailing just behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The three parties composing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition – the Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals – all took a heavy beating, falling to single digits in both states.

The vote follows a trend in European countries where anti-establishment movements, well versed in social media dissemination and led by strong communicators, are increasingly appealing to voters dissatisfied with centrist parties. Yet the results in Germany also point to specific fissures within Europe’s largest economy, experts said: The AfD has managed to tap into historical grievances stemming from the perceived failure of Berlin to address social and economic inequalities faced by the east after the fall of communism and the country’s reunification.

“This vote for many eastern voters represents the starkest rejection of being considered second-class citizens,” said Rafael Loss, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The perception is that the state has been neglecting the east, failing to invest enough there while not tackling issues such as immigration, social justice and crime. This, Loss said, was also enabled by Berlin’s failure in communicating effectively to voters in the east and a lack of representation of easterners in leadership positions – besides exceptions such as former Chancellor Angela Merkel – in the central government and in major companies.

The AfD has tried to fill this vacuum, setting up summer camps and support groups. That has placed the party in an advantageous position to “dominate the emotional ecosystem in the east and to frame problems in certain ways”, Loss said.

Among those problems: an economy that has long felt very different from that of the western Germany.

Although the gap is narrowing, eastern German households hold only about half as much private wealth as those in the west – with pension insurance and income lower than in the west too. The mass exodus of young skilled workers to the west after the fall of the Berlin Wall and a sharp drop in birthrates in the 1990s have led to a shortage of local youth in the workforce.

Increasingly, immigrant workers are filling that void: The German Economic Institute said foreign employees’ contribution to the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of the eastern states is 24.6 billion euros ($27.2bn) – 5.8 percent of the total. The research institute noted that fewer migrants would be far more detrimental for the east than the west. In all, 8.6 percent of the workforce in the east consists of foreign nationals — compared with 15.5 percent of the labour force in the west.

And though still low, the east’s contribution to the national GDP has increased from 6.8 percent in 1991 to 11.2 percent last year on the back of billions of euros in investments in infrastructure and high-tech industries, especially semiconductors.

But what many residents in the east see “is an ageing population that doesn’t look like a promising, innovative future. You feel like you live in a retirement home,” said Ulrich Bruckner, professor for European studies at Stanford University in Berlin.

Many easterners feel that policies focused on climate change and integration are elitist and imposed on them by a government dominated by those in the west.

“There is fear of being overwhelmed by Western values which are not in line with traditional values that the AfD stands for,” political scientist Florian Hartleb said. “It shows how strong the desire for identity is – a reason why immigration is seen as a threat.”

Amid all of this, the AfD’s far-right stance does not appear to be a factor against it in voting in the east. German security services have labelled the party’s local branches in Thuringia and Saxony “right-wing extremist”. Its leader Bjorn Hocke has been fined twice for using Nazi slogans.

Divide over Russia

The historical east-west divide also translates into different feelings over Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. After decades under Soviet rule, the former East Germany doesn’t view Moscow as a threat to the same extent as in the pro-NATO former West Germany.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, another populist anti-immigration party that performed stronger in Sunday’s elections than many established parties despite being founded only in January, has called for an end to military support to Ukraine and for sanctions against Moscow to be lifted.

Questions linger over the impact of the AfD’s performance in Thuringia and Saxony at the national level as federal elections are set to take place next year. The two states combined are home to a little more than 6 million people out of Germany’s 85 million population. Nationally, the party is polling at about 16 percent.

Yet the AfD’s emergence and its narrative have already moved the pendulum of German politics towards the right. The government has tightened immigration laws and pledged to do more to reduce immigration and boost deportations. Last week, the government deported dozens of Afghan nationals to Kabul for the first time since the Taliban takeover in 2021.