Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is celebrating Monday after its "historic success,” in state elections. The populist, right-wing party won a solid plurality in the eastern state of Thuringia, BBC reported Monday.
The results have prompted widespread protests in Germany, with dozens of people streaming into the streets to demonstrate against the policies of the AfD.
Germany’s political base is shared by a myriad of competing parties which must form coalitions with each other to secure power. With one-third of the vote in Thuringia, the AfD won a convincing victory over its chief rival, the conservative CDU party, as well as the three parties that constitute the current federal government in Germany, the BBC noted.
It is the first time since the end of the Second World War that a right-wing party has won a state election although it will probably not form a government because it has no coalition allies. The AfD almost won another state election, Saxony, coming in second after the CDU, in the Sunday state elections.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, an unpopular Social Democratic Party leader who maintains power through the support of Greens and the leftist FDP, called the election a "bitter" pill to swallow and encouraged splinter parties to help anyone but the AfD form a state government i"The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country's reputation," he said in a statement to Reuters.
The AfD's star candidate in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, called the election results a "historic victory" that he was proud to be a part of. He won a seat in the state parliament due to Germany’s list system of proportional representation, where seats are allocated according to where a candidate sits on the party’s list.
As the Nazi Party profited from the multi-party system and proportional representation of the Weimar Republic, so some who accuse the AfD of political extremism see historic parallels in the party’s current success.
Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch noted that Sunday’s election occurred on Sept. 1, 85 years after Hitler’s invasion of Poland that sparked the Second World War.
Federal elections in Germany are only a year away and the AfD can look forward to some success if it maintains its position in the polls, just behind the Social Democrats. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel called her party’s electoral performance a "requiem" for the three parties that keep each other in power. "Without us a stable government is no longer possible at all," she said.
The CDU has stated it will not work with the AfD and German chancellor Olaf Scholz has urged opposition parties to come together to form coalitions to "firewall" the AfD from governing, per BBC News.
The German government has moved further right in recent months to try to stem support for the AfD and has promised the mass deportation of illegal immigrants after years of mass immigration that has often resulted in episodes of crime.
