ERFURT, Germany – Voters in two former East German states began casting ballots Sunday in elections expected to deal a blow to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government and deliver big gains for the far-right AfD.
The contests in Thuringia and Saxony come just over a week after three people were killed in a suspected Islamist attack, which has fuelled a bitter debate over immigration in Germany.
Opinion polls have the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead in Thuringia and a close second in Saxony, while also predicting a strong showing for the upstart far-left BSW.
The two parties have found a receptive audience in the eastern states for their criticism of the government in Berlin and of military aid to Ukraine.
An election victory for the AfD would be a landmark in Germany’s post-war history and represent a rebuke for Scholz ahead of national elections in 2025.
In both states, Scholz’s Social Democrats are polling at around six percent, while their coalition partners, the Greens and the liberal FDP, lag even further behind.
But even if the AfD does come out on top in the elections, it is unlikely to come to power because other parties have ruled out working with the far right to form a government.
Voting stations close at 6:00 pm , with the first exit polls expected shortly after.
Created in 2013 as an anti-euro group before morphing into an anti-immigration party, the AfD has capitalized on the fractious three-way coalition in Berlin to rise in opinion polls.
In June’s EU Parliament elections, the party scored a record 15.9 percent overall and did especially well in eastern Germany, where it emerged as the biggest force.
Saxony is the most populous of the former East German states and has been a conservative stronghold since reunification.
Thuringia meanwhile is more rural and the only state currently led by the far-left Die Linke, a successor of East Germany’s ruling communist party.
A third former East German state, Brandenburg, is also due to hold an election later in September, where polls have the AfD ahead on around 24 percent.
The picture in each state is slightly different but “in any case, it is clear that the AfD will unite a very strong number of votes behind it”, Marianne Kneuer, a professor of politics at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden), told AFP.
The AfD has found stronger support in the east where more voters “identify with its nationalist and authoritarian positions” and many are dissatisfied with the mainstream parties, Kneuer said.
At the party’s last campaign meeting on Saturday in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, Thorsten Haentzsche, a 52-year-old voter, said he was “dreaming of an absolute majority” for the AfD.
“But we are realistic. A score of at least 33 percent would be great because it would give us a blocking minority in the (regional) parliament,” he said.
