The so-called “Super Sunday” vote is the biggest since a record number of refugees came to Germany, and is largely billed as a mood test for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open door policy towards refugees.
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Her Christian Democrats (CDU) lost votes but remained the strongest party in the poor eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD made its biggest gains, taking a quarter of the vote.
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Merkel acknowledged that Sunday’s three elections, which produced painful losses for her conservative Christian Democratic Union, were dominated by the migrant issue and many voters believed there is “no conclusive and satisfactory solution”.
But the AfD remains a minor force, especially in western Germany. As of 2015, the AfD had gained representation in five German state parliaments. Its campaign platform for Baden-Wuerttemberg calls the governing parties “saboteurs of our state and our society” and says the AfD is the voice of the “awakening resistance of the bourgeoisie”.
Asked about his party’s future course, AfD deputy leader Alexander Gauland said Monday: “I favor very clear and hard opposition, for a long time yet”. According to news reports, the Christian Democratic governor of Saxony Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, who won reelection Sunday, said: “We did not want a strong AfD, we certainly did not want to have them in [the state] parliament”. Originally considered a right-wing fringe group, the party has been gaining in popularity since the migrant crisis hit the European Union a year ago.
According to a survey conducted in early February, 81 percent of Germans feel that the migrant crisis is “out of control” under Merkel’s rule, and the majority wants more restrictive measures for asylum seekers. The Pirate Party, which campaigns for data privacy, won seats in four German state legislatures in 2012 only to fizzle by the federal election the next year.
Turnout in all three states was much higher than in 2011, rising by 5.7 percentage points in Baden-Wuerttemberg, by 9.7 points in Rhineland-Palatinate, and by 11.8 points in Saxony-Anhalt.
The results are a huge boost for AfD leader Frauke Petry, who was dubbed the nation’s “most risky woman” by the media in January after she called for refugees to be shot and killed on the border with Austria. In a vote widely seen as tantamount to a referendum on the welcome Merkel had extended to Syrian refugees, the verdict was interpreted as an unequivocal thumbs-down, with electoral momentum passing – nearly unthinkable in Germany – to the xenophobic far right.
Andreas Roedder, contemporary history professor at Mainz University, told AFP that due to the migrant crisis, “we are seeing a normalisation of right-wing populist movements in Germany just like elsewhere in Europe, even if here, it takes on a special form because we can’t ignore Germany’s past”.
And in Rhineland-Palatinate, where the CDU came a close second last time, the race is on a knife edge.
The AfD’s strength will not have any immediate effect on Merkel’s government because the refugee issue is managed by her federal government, not by the states.
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The three states are Baden Wurttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate in the west and Saxony-Anhalt in the east. Their combined population is about 17 million, around a fifth of Germany’s population.
