The far-right made historic gains in Germany’s regional elections

Thuringia’s BSW: How far are left-wing right-wing parties from forming a new state government? Shock and frustration for the left-right coalition

There will be another state election in September in Brandenburg, led by a party. Germany’s next national election is due in a little over a year.

There is a complicated politics in Thuringia because Bodo Ramelow led a minority government. The projections showed it losing nearly two-thirds of its support compared with five years ago, dropping to around 12%.

Sahra Wagenknecht, long one of its best-known figures, left last year to form her own party, which is now outperforming the Left. Wagenknecht celebrated what she called an unprecedented success for a new party, underlined its refusal to work with AfD’s Höcke and said she hopes it can form “a good government” with the CDU.

Other parties say they won’t put AfD in power by joining it in a coalition. Even so, its strength is likely to make it extremely difficult to form new state governments, forcing the parties into exotic new coalitions. In Thuringia and the state of Saxony, the BSW took up to 12% of the vote.

AfD is at its strongest in the formerly communist east, and the domestic intelligence agency has the party’s branches in both Saxony and Thuringia under official surveillance as “proven right-wing extremist” groups. The leader of the group in Thuringia has been convicted of using a Nazi slogan at political events, but is appealing.

The left-wing party wants a diplomatic solution to the war in Europe and wants to tighten immigration into Germany. It is bad news for Germany’s social democrats, the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which could see more left-leaning voters pull away from them because of the B SW strong showing.

In the eastern part of the country, Russia’s war with Ukraine is a sensitive issue. Both BSW and the afD are against Berlin’s delivery of weapons to Ukraine. The decision by the German government and the US to deploy long-range missiles to Germany was slammed by Wagenknecht.

The environmentalist Greens were on course to lose seats in Thuringia, but Scholz’s social democrats were on course to stay in the two legislature with single digit support. Both the state governments had junior coalition partners. The pro-business Free Democrats were going to lose seats in the national government in Thuringia. It had no representation in Saxony.

Deep discontent with a national government notorious for infighting, anti-immigration sentiment and skepticism toward German military aid for Ukraine are among the factors that have contributed to support for populist parties in the region, which is less prosperous than western Germany.

BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany won a state election for the first time Sunday in the country’s east, and was set to finish at least a very close second to mainstream conservatives in a second vote, projections showed.

The new party founded by a prominent left-wing activist immediately made an impact, while the unpopular national government of Chancellor Scholz got weak results.

The projections put the support of the CDU at 31.6% in the state, with the Nationalists’ Alternative for Democracy at 30.6%.

“An openly right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in a state parliament for the first time since 1949, and that causes many people very deep concern and fear,” said Omid Nouripour, a leader of the Greens, one of the national governing parties.

“This is a historic success for us,” Alice Weidel, a national co-leader of AfD, told ARD. She described the result to be a “big deal” for the coalition.

The anger of the Syrian murderer at a festival in Solingen, Germany, as a wake-up call for changes in the immigration system

German voters are becoming increasingly frustrated by a wave of migrants arriving in the country in recent years, especially now that Germany’s economy has stagnated.

This frustration peaked last week when a Syrian man stabbed to death three people and injured several others at a festival in the western German city of Solingen.

The revelation that the man was supposed to have been deported months ago led to growing anger in Germany about its immigration system.

Still, the nationalist, Russia-friendly party could end up with enough seats in both states to block decisions requiring a two-thirds vote, such as the appointment of judges and top security officials.

The party of a popular communist party politician won more than 15% of seats in Thringen and more than 9% of seats in the Saxony’s parliament after just eight months of existence.