Rarely have regional elections in Germany had such an impact in Berlin as on Sunday. The victory of the ultras of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Thuringia and their second place, hot on the heels of the Christian Democrats of the CDU, in Saxony, has triggered an earthquake at the federal level. The painful defeat of Olaf Scholz’s partners leaves the coalition weaker than ever just over a year before the federal elections. Voters have given a warning to the traditional parties, boosting two formations at the ideological extremes that present themselves as anti-establishment and complicate the devilish puzzle of forming a government.
Scholz, a Social Democrat who governs Berlin in coalition with the Greens and Liberals, called on Monday for the “democratic parties” to form “stable” governments without the far right. Fears that some party might be tempted to break the cordon sanitaire that Germany strictly applies to the AfD resurfaced on Sunday evening, when exit polls were announced: for the first time since World War II, a far-right party had won the most votes in one of the 16 federal states. In Thuringia, a far-right party won the most votes. land of just over two million inhabitants, home of Goethe and Schiller and the seed of the Weimar Republic, which was the first region in which the Nazis entered into government.
Reminiscences of a not-so-distant past weigh heavily when putting the data into perspective: one in three voters (32.8%) chose the ballot of a party led by a right-wing extremist, Björn Höcke, who has unearthed Nazi slogans that had been locked away for decades in 2024. A victory for the far right in Germany is, by definition, more symbolic than anywhere else. Perhaps that is why on Sunday in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, politicians were heard talking about how this result would be perceived abroad, about the image that Germany projects to the world. The fact that an AfD government is almost impossible is, in reality, secondary.
The cordon sanitaire will hold, judging by the reactions of all political parties. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz on Monday rejected any collaboration with the ultras and confirmed that the CDU, the second largest force in Thuringia and the largest in Saxony, will try to form a government in both countries“We are the last bastion of the democratic centre against far-right populism,” he said.
Pressure on the Government increases
The victory of the far right and the collapse of the parties in the governing coalition are increasing the pressure on Olaf Scholz, who is being asked to change course. The burning issue of the campaign, migration, will mark the coming days, but the debate on German support for Ukraine will also intensify.
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Merz on Monday described migration as an “unresolved problem”, despite the fact that Scholz’s government had already announced the tightening of asylum conditions and deported 28 Afghans convicted of various crimes in Germany two days before the elections. “The chancellor must radically correct his policies,” warned the leader of the Christian Democrats.
The backlash against the three governing parties by voters was a record-breaking one. The SPD won 6.1 percent of the votes in Thuringia and 7.3 percent in Saxony, a result that Scholz described as “bitter.” The party’s co-chairwoman, Saskia Esken, acknowledged that they take this as “a wake-up call.” Their partners in Berlin are on the verge of irrelevance. In 2019, they barely made it into the Thuringian state parliament; this time, both have been left out. The Greens are, along with the CDU, the bête noire against which both the AfD and the left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) are haranguing in the east of the country. In Saxony, the Greens exceeded the 5 percent threshold that guarantees seats by a tenth of a point.
As happened after the debacle of the European elections, when the votes confirmed the loss of confidence that the polls had been showing, the debate on a possible early election is resurfacing. AfD, which claims its right to govern as it was the party with the most votes, called for it again on Monday: “The people are dissatisfied and have made it clear that they do not want this government. Their vote for a free way for new elections cannot be ignored,” insisted AfD co-president Alice Weidel at a press conference in Berlin, which was not attended by the winner of the elections in Thuringia, Björn Höcke. The cordon sanitaire “is unconstitutional,” she added.
The coalition, which is limping and has more reasons than ever to point out each other’s flaws, will hold, say experts such as Wolfgang Merkel, a political scientist at the Berlin Social Science Research Centre (WZB). “Early elections would be a terrible punishment for all three parties. The liberals risk being expelled from the Bundestag, the Social Democrats risk being halved, and the Greens risk being limited to their staunchest supporters,” he says. “It is not strength but weakness that holds this failed coalition together.”
Four-party coalition
The results in the two countries The recent upheavals in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) have confirmed the growing fragmentation of the German political landscape. The formation of coalitions, to which Germans are well accustomed (all four of Angela Merkel’s governments were coalitions, three of them with the Social Democrats), is becoming so complicated that a four-party alliance may be needed to stave off the far right.
“The situation in Thuringia is going to be very complicated for the CDU,” explains Thorsten Faas, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin. “They will probably have to rethink their relationship with Die Linke,” he adds, referring to the veto that the Christian Democrats maintain against the left-wing party, heir to the communist party SED. Merz explained on Monday that the veto was decided at a party congress in 2017 and “is maintained.”
In Thuringia, the AfD’s 32 MPs in a parliament with 88 seats make it extremely difficult to form a majority that would exclude them. According to the provisional count, the combined CDU, SPD and Sahra Wagenknecht’s party would be one seat short. And there is no other option than to turn to Die Linke. The CDU candidate in that state, Mario Voigt, announced that he will begin talks with the SPD and will continue with the rest of the forces. The veto of the post-communists is only one of the many headaches of the coming days. The big question will be whether they can season the ideological salad of an alliance with Wagenknecht, who leads an anti-NATO, anti-immigration party that compromises with Russia.
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