The extreme right in Germany continues to climb positions in the polls, to the alarm of the rest of the parties, which confirm how this formation benefits from the discontent of a part of the citizenry with the government of social democrats, environmentalists and liberals of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and especially with the agenda of the greens, against which he attacks calling it costly and economically harmful.
After two polls last week that placed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on a par with Scholz’s Social Democrat SPD, both in second place, another poll, this one carried out by the GMS polling institute for the Bild newspaper, awards second place to the AfD alone. If there are general elections this Sunday, the extreme right would obtain 19%, surpassing the SPD (18%).
One of the two co-presidents of the AfD, Tino Chrupalla, attacked the Greens’ policy of promoting a move away from hydrocarbons, linking it to inflation and industrial decline. “We are the only party that would not form a coalition with the dangerous greens,†said Chrupalla, who, along with co-chair Alice Weidel, often carries the cordon sanitaire that other parties subject the AfD to when forging government coalitions in the länder.
In a television program the night before last, Chancellor Scholz denied that the AfD had become a Volkspartei with such percentages, that is, a people’s party, as the majority parties are called in the German-speaking world. “The AfD aspires more to divide, and I think that everything must be done to remain united,” said Scholz.
Although the government is concerned about the reactivation of the extreme right, the idea predominates that the problems it exploits to grow will gradually be resolved. Since its founding ten years ago, the AfD has resorted to conveying the irritation of a part of the citizenry in the face of potentially polarizing issues: the euro and the Greek debt crisis, immigration and Islam -which still work for them-, and vaccination and anti-covid measures. .
Analysts agree that the ultra-right is growing due to the government’s unpopularity, without the conservative CDU-CSU bloc – which leads all polls, in this one with 29% – managing to capitalize on the situation. The Greens score at 15% and the liberal FDP at 7%. The AfD is also gaining strength in the länder of the former communist GDR, where it exceeds 23% and could be victorious in regional elections next year. Three Eastern Länder will go to the polls: Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia.
