A far-right party won a state election for the first time in post-World War II Germany in the country's east on Sunday, and it looked set to finish a very close second to mainstream conservatives in a second vote. The new Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, or BSW, founded by a prominent leftist also made a strong impact in Thuringia and Saxony, while the parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unpopular national government obtained extremely weak results, per the AP. The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 32.8% of the vote in Thuringia—well ahead of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, the main national opposition party, with 23.6%.
In neighboring Saxony, projections for ARD and ZDF public television with the count well advanced put support for the CDU, which has led the state since German reunification in 1990, at 31.9% and AfD at 30.6-30.7%. AfD made substantial gains in Thuringia and smaller ones in Saxony compared with the last state elections in 2019. "An openly right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in a state parliament for the first time since 1949, and that causes many people very deep concern and fear," said Omid Nouripour, a leader of the Greens, one of the national governing parties. Other parties say they won't put AfD in power by joining it in a coalition. Even so, its strength is likely to make it extremely difficult to form new state governments, forcing other parties into exotic new coalitions.
"This is a historic success for us," Alice Weidel, a national co-leader of AfD, told ARD. She described the result as a "requiem" for Scholz's coalition. Deep discontent with a national government notorious for infighting, anti-immigration sentiment, and skepticism toward German military aid for Ukraine are among the factors that have contributed to support for populist parties in the region, which is less prosperous than western Germany. AfD is at its strongest in the formerly communist east, and the domestic intelligence agency has the party's branches in both Saxony and Thuringia under official surveillance as "proven right-wing extremist" groups. Its leader in Thuringia, Bjorn Hoecke, has been convicted of knowingly using a Nazi slogan at political events, but he's appealing that verdict. (More Germany stories.)
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