Germany: AfD adds to string of successes in Brandenburg

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has once again seen strong electoral gains.

In the state election in Brandenburg, which surrounds Germany's capital, Berlin, the AfD received 29.2% of the vote, almost 6% more than in 2019. However, it finished second to the incumbent Social Democrats (SPD), the party of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and has little prospect of participating in the new state government since all other parties have ruled out forming a coalition that includes the AfD.

The party campaigned with aggressive calls for mass deportations across Germany. Party newcomers tried to appeal to younger voters by using racist songs and videos on social media.

The Brandenburg branch of the AfD is considered especially radical within an already radical party. For years, the state intelligence service has listed it as "suspected right-wing extremist." The AfD's lead candidate in Brandenburg, Hans-Christoph Berndt, was a co-founder and chairman of a neo-Nazi-influenced group before he joined the party. He still has close contact with numerous extreme right-wing organizations.

Younger voters turning to the far-right

Berndt's first reaction to the AfD's election results was to say they were successful because the party had become the strongest political force among young voters. "This popularity among young people proves that we are the future," he said at an AfD election celebration in the state capital of Potsdam. 

According to a poll by public broadcaster ARD, around 32% of voters between the ages of 16 and 24 in Brandenburg voted for the AfD, by far the majority among that age group.

In an interview with ARD, Bernd Baumann, the leader of the AfD's parliamentary group, said the election success was a "milestone." He pointed out that his party was already shaping the German political agenda. Baumann said the center-left had won just by a small margin in Brandenburg because it had "fully adopted our core demand for the deportation (of refugees) at the borders. In other words, the AfD is already setting the issues."

As the AfD has been celebrating its recent successes, the center-right Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the SPD have tightened their asylum and migration policy positions. Many NGOs have criticized these moves, saying the AfD will ultimately benefit from them.

Are Germany's new border controls a response to AfD success?

In early September 2024, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ordered temporary controls at Germany's exterior borders. She said they were meant to reduce irregular migration to Germany and protect against terror threats following a deadly knife attack in the city of Solingen. 

The attack prompted the already anti-immigration AfD to call for the deportation of millions of people across Germany. Some members of the AfD are so opposed to any kind of immigration that they attended a secret meeting in November 2023 to plot the mass deportation of asylum seekers, foreigners with residence permits and even "non-assimilated" German citizens. The meeting, which was also attended by members of the CDU, foreign right-wing extremists, and some German neo-Nazi groups, was eventually exposed by investigative journalists.

Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has expressed concern about not only the AfD's strong performance but also the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, which is also hostile to immigrants.

"The political fringes' strength is not good for Germany," Schuster remarked on the evening of Brandenburg's election. "If almost a third of voters want to see a destructive political party like the AfD in power again, and a populist force like the BSW reaches double digits, then we cannot remain unaffected by that."

The AfD sets its sights on the federal election

A day after the election, AfD co-chair Alice Weidel already had her sights set on Germany's most important upcoming vote: the 2025 federal election. Following successful results in state and European elections in 2024, Weidel told a press conference that the AfD is now the second strongest force in the country.

This gives her party "claim to government participation," she said, meaning the AfD deserves a place in a national governing coalition.

In the Thuringia state election early September, the AfD garnered the most votes of any party, the first time it had come out on top in a state election since the party's founding in 2013. They also did extremely well in the Saxony state election, but in both cases all other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with the far-right.

This article was originally written in German.