Germany is playing its future in the east of the country

“Please don’t write that we Germans are Nazis,” says Cornelia Schwarz, 65, who is worried about what people abroad might say about the regional elections taking place on Sunday in her home region of Thuringia and neighbouring Saxony. According to polls, almost one in three of her fellow citizens are planning to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has Björn Höcke, a former high school teacher who was recently convicted of using Nazi slogans in public, at the head of the list.

A polarized Germany, with a political landscape shaken by the rise of extremists and mired in a heated debate on migration, is facing crucial elections this Sunday. For the first time since the founding of the Federal Republic, a xenophobic, Eurosceptic and pro-Russian party that feeds on disappointment with the traditional parties and fear of immigration could emerge victorious in one of its 16 states. If the forecasts are fulfilled, the result of the elections in these two states will be a countries from East Germany will cause a political upheaval throughout the country.

The government of Olaf Scholz, a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals, is going into the elections at its lowest point in popularity, worn down by continuous crises and with very poor prospects. The Greens and Liberals could be left out of parliament by not surpassing the 5% threshold. Scholz’s SPD is only slightly above. These are only regional elections, but the whole country will be on tenterhooks over what happens this Sunday and on the 22nd, when Brandenburg also renews its parliament.

“The atmosphere is very charged,” says Schwarz, who recently retired as a renovation technician, as she leaves a supermarket in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, after doing her weekly shopping. A former SPD voter, she says she is “disappointed” with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party and his government partners, among whom “he has failed to establish order.” Ten days before the election, she said she was undecided about who to vote for.

The Islamist attack in Solingen, in which three people were killed, allegedly by a Syrian refugee who attacked festival-goers with a knife, has outraged the public and given fuel to extremists. The AfD immediately tried to exploit it with slogans such as “Solingen or Höcke”. “We will expel all illegal immigrants,” Höcke promised at the closing rally in Erfurt on Saturday. “The knives are not the problem; it is the knife men.”

The country has experienced the final stretch of the campaign under unusual tension. In small towns such as Bautzen in Saxony, hundreds of far-right demonstrators came out to protest against the gay pride march amidst heavy police presence. At each AfD rally, noisy counter-demonstrators have gathered with signs such as “Björn Höcke is a Nazi” or “Fuck Nazis“(fuck the Nazis).”

German retailers have publicly called on citizens to vote for “democratic parties”. “A swing to the right in the upcoming elections would be a threat to our open and tolerant social order,” said the president of the German Association of Trade and Commerce (HDE), Alexander von Preen, who spoke of the 120,000 unfilled jobs in his sector and wondered where the necessary workers will come from if politicians who advocate the marginalisation of foreigners come to power.

One of the country’s largest supermarket chains, Edeka, published a full-page advertisement in newspapers on Thursday, using a parallel with fruit and vegetables to explain “why blue is not an option.” “They could be toxic,” it says, in a not-so-veiled reference to the AfD, which is represented by that color.

“I am concerned about the state of democracy”

“I am worried about the election result,” says Burkhard Jung, the mayor of Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony. Not so much about the result that his party, the SPD, could obtain, which the polls give 7%, not far from the 7.7% of the last election, in 2019. “What worries me is the state of democracy,” he reflects in conversation with EL PAÍS next to the historic Nikolaikirche (Nicholas Church), the place where the Peaceful Revolution began that in 1989 led to the disappearance of the GDR.

“Leipzig is a special place because the experience of 1989 still has a strong influence and we have a civil society that clearly stands for freedom and democracy,” says Jung, who has been voted for by his fellow citizens without interruption since 2006. “But there are people who increasingly feel left behind, who can no longer keep up, who have the feeling that everything happens in the big cities and that rural areas are neglected.”

The vote in the European elections last June shows that the districts furthest from the capitals were the ones that supported the AfD the most. In Görlitz, on the Polish border, more than 40% of the electorate voted for the ultras. All of the former East Germany is dyed blue except for the German capital and Potsdam, a university city that is a refuge for many young families fleeing chaotic Berlin.

“There is a palpable sense of disappointment with the government and democratic institutions,” says the mayor of Leipzig, adding another variable: “There is also great concern about migration. The refugee issue has been a central issue since 2015,” the year in which Angela Merkel decided not to close the borders to the more than one million Syrians fleeing the war. Although eastern Germany welcomes far fewer refugees than the west, xenophobic attitudes are much more prevalent, according to recent studies.

It has been 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. From socialism to capitalism, from a one-party dictatorship to democracy. “We are talking about major changes, to which migration and the climate crisis are now added. More and more East Germans are exhausted, their hopes have not been fulfilled and they do not want any more change,” says André Brodocz, a political scientist at the University of Erfurt. “The AfD tells them that these changes can easily be avoided by politics, and for some voters these simple solutions to complex problems are attractive.”

The other factors

Other factors contribute to the potential explosiveness of the elections in Thuringia and Saxony. A regional government with extremists would be destabilising for the federal government, which, with just over a year to go until the end of its mandate – the elections are due to be held on 28 September 2025 – is sinking in the polls and has lost the confidence of the majority of Germans. Early elections are unlikely, but not impossible. The ailing economy of Europe’s leading industrial power is narrowly avoiding recession, but not pessimism about the future. Energy prices, rising living costs and regulations such as those that will force the replacement of gas heating have further disappointed many Germans.

The right-wing populism of the AfD is joined by another populist option, but at the opposite end of the political spectrum: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW, for its initials in German), a party created a few months ago as a split from the radical left of Die Linke. Its personalism is evident from its very name, since Sahra Wagenknecht is perhaps the best-known East German
after Angela Merkel. But this personalism is also evident on the street, where it is easier to see election posters with Wagenknecht’s face than those of the top candidates in Saxony and Thuringia.

Wagenknecht, 55, is best served by her charisma. She has shaped her profile through appearances on television talk shows over the years. She is well-educated, but anyone can understand what she says. She is well-known, but it remains unclear what she will decide after the elections. It will be up to her to make one or the other candidate president.

In Thuringia, the ultras are leading in the polls

In Thuringia, a region of just over two million people, the AfD looks set to take first place with 30% of the vote. The conservative CDU would get 22% of the vote, with BSW close behind with 18%. Die Linke (The Left), the party of current Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, would fall to fourth place with 14% of the vote. Scholz’s partners in Berlin (Greens and Liberals) will not enter the regional parliament and the SPD itself is in danger of disappearing from regional politics with 6% of the vote.

Ramelow has been at the helm of the land – the last five in the minority after the crisis that ended the career of Angela Merkel’s successor in 2019 – and is very popular, but has been dragged down by the collapse of his party. He is aware that he will not repeat and is betting on a coalition government with as many members as necessary to avoid the AfD. “In this campaign I fight for democracy and against the normalization of fascism,” he told a group of foreign correspondents in Erfurt last week. He also complained that the CDU refuses to cooperate with him because it considers his party the heir of the SED, the sole party of the GDR, while it does agree to talk to BSW.

In Saxony, polls are very close

In Saxony, the region of the former GDR where economic growth is most noticeable, with a powerful microchip industry that has popularised the name Silicon Saxony, the polls are very close. The CDU maintains a slight lead over the AfD, but either of the two could end up in first place. Both have more than 30% of voting intentions according to the latest poll published by Forsa, after the attack in Solingen. Sahra Wagenknecht’s party (12%) will play a decisive role in forming a coalition government. The SPD (7%) and the Greens (6%) are holding out, but both the liberals of the FDP and Die Linke are disappearing from the political map.

The Solingen murders have marked a turning point for Germany’s asylum and migration policies, but experts agree that the effect on voting intentions is minimal. “This was already the case with the European elections, which took place a week after the murder of a policeman in Mannheim,” explains Hermann Binkert, director of the polling firm Insa. “AfD voters may be even more motivated, but they had already decided their vote,” he adds.

Economists are warning of the consequences of a victory for the extremists. “The participation of the AfD or the BSW in government would be a dangerous experiment,” says Marcel Fratzscher, president of the DIW economic institute, who has published a study comparing the policies of both parties, which agree on issues such as the war in Ukraine, immigration and climate change. “The result of applying them would be job losses, as prosperity and growth would be jeopardised. In addition, society would become even more divided,” adds the professor at Humboldt University.

Those who do not vote for the AfD are regretting the image projected abroad by these elections, for which hundreds of foreign journalists have travelled. The head of the tourist office in an eastern city admitted last week that she avoids mentioning the region to which she belongs: “I say that it is so many kilometres from Berlin. It is a pity, but I do not want to be associated with the Nazis.”

“Yes, there is a lot of dissatisfaction, there are probably too many refugees, but voting for the AfD is not going to solve any of that,” laments 40-year-old Jan Grosch on Angerplatz in Erfurt. “There is a lot of talk about 30% of Thuringians voting for the extremists, but you have to remember that 70% of us are against it.”

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