The AfD, Germany’s far-right party, won its first district elections on Sunday, reinvigorating the anti-immigrant party, which has reached record highs in the polls.
Robert Sesselmann, a lawyer and regional legislator, emerged victorious for district governor in Sonneberg, in the central state of Thuringia, close to the Bavarian border. Sesselmann won 52.8% of the vote, according to the Electoral Commission.
The AfD won despite major party calls for voters to support the conservative CDU’s current director, Joergen Koepper.
With only about 57,000 inhabitants, Sonneberg is one of Germany’s smallest districts, but its historic victory has made it the first to be controlled by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
“Robert Sesselmann has made history,” tweeted AfD co-leader Alice Weidel.
This milestone comes at a time when, according to recent polls, support for the AfD was at an all-time high of between 18% and 20%, tied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and trailing only the conservative CDU/CSU bloc.
The AfD is doing even better in the former communist states of East Germany – Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony – which are holding regional elections next year in which the AfD hopes to make big gains.
Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild, called Sesselmann’s victory a political “earthquake” and “a remarkable success for the far-right party”.
Thuringian Interior Minister Georg Maier, of the Social Democrats, called the result “an alarm for all democratic forces,” according to Bild.
Thuringia’s regional leader of the AfD party is regarded as a far-right arsonist, Bjoern Hoecke, whose previous comments about Germany’s Nazi past have sparked outrage.
Hoecke, considered an extremist by German intelligence, called Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “memorial of shame” and called for a “180-degree shift” in the country’s historical culture.
Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party before turning into an anti-Muslim and anti-immigration party, the AfD has benefited from growing dissatisfaction with Scholz’s tripartite coalition amid concerns about inflation and the government’s climate plans.
High immigration also remains a top concern for voters.
The AfD surprised the political system when it won about 13% of the vote in the 2017 general election, catapulting its deputies into the German parliament.
However, in the 2021 federal election, it fell to about 10%.
In Germany, where coalition governments are the norm, the main parties have always ruled out an alliance with the AfD.
Source: DN
