In southeastern Thuringia, CDU candidate Christian Herrgott surprisingly won the election on Sunday as ‘Landrat’, the director of an association of municipalities. Nearly 50 percent voted for AfD candidate Uwe Thrum, but in the second round Herrgott narrowly won with 52 percent. In view of the approaching East German state elections in September, the regional election in Thuringia was closely monitored.
In the Saale-Orla district, near the Czech border, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) appeared to deliver a second ‘Landrat’ in recent weeks, following the success of the AfD candidate in the Sonneberg district in the summer of 2023. But AfD man Thrum lost after what he labeled a “partly inhuman campaign” against him.
According to Thrum, the CDU competitor only won because of the “votes of red and green”, he said, referring to the government parties SPD and Greens. In the second round of the elections, many people rallied behind the Christian Democrats, including voters who normally prefer another party, to thwart an AfD leader. Thuringia’s AfD chairman Björn Höcke called the victory of CDU member Herrgott a “pyrrhic victory of the cartel.”
The protests in dozens of German cities in recent weeks against the far right and the AfD may have mobilized a number of people in Saale-Orla for the CDU candidate. The turnout in the second round was high for a regional election at 69 percent, and also slightly higher than in the first round two weeks ago, when none of the four candidates received more than 50 percent. In the previous Landrat election in 2018, 33 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.
It is not clear what the massive demonstrations against the AfD – at least a million citizens were on their feet – exactly mean for the party. The reason for the demonstrations was: a revelation by the journalistic platform Correctiv, in early January, which outlined how prominent AfD politicians, meeting in Potsdam with people from the far-right scene, planned to expel millions of people from Germany. In polls, the AfD has since declined by a percentage point or two, but the AfD is still firmly in second place with around 20 percent, behind the CDU (30 percent).
Also read
Austrian Martin Sellner wants to mainstream far-right ideas
But according to research by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the AfD is not the only one to suffer from the revelations. According to the newspaper Since Correctiv’s reporting, the AfD has received so many new members that the party office has to hire extra people to process the registration forms. This would involve between 130 and 150 new members per day. The extremism in the party deters part of the German population, but attracts another part.
Ambiguous effect
The party leadership seems to be aware of the ambivalent effect. The two chairmen Alice Weidel and Timo Chrupalla did not distance themselves from the meeting in Potsdam but called it a “private matter” and focused on reporting on it. Other AfD politicians felt it necessary to emphasize that the AfD indeed plans to deport as many people as possible, including people with a German passport.
Sociologist Hartmut Rosa, affiliated with the university in Jena, Thuringia, also sees a danger in the further hardening fronts. In addition to the voters in Saale-Orla, who unitedly supported the CDU, all major political parties are also adhering to the cordon-sanitary around the AfD. According to Rosa, this may give voters the impression that the AfD is the only party that really distinguishes itself from the very different parties CDU, SPD, Greens, FDP and Die Linke. Björn Höcke – who the security services monitor as a right-wing extremist – also refers to this sentiment when he speaks of the “cartel”. Even more important than the political cordon sanitary, Rosa considers a “substantive fire wall”, in which parties make it clear that “liberal democracy is not negotiable”.
Also, strategic voting, as Saale-Orla voters did this weekend, could have unintended consequences in September. In Saxony, for example, where a new state parliament will also be elected on September 1, the CDU is the only serious competitor for the AfD. The CDU is at 30 percent there, the AfD gets 35 percent in a recent poll, despite the Correctiv revelation. SPD and Greens only just above the 5 percent electoral threshold. If their voters switch to the CDU for tactical reasons, the SPD and Greens may not reach the electoral threshold, which would mean that the parties would disappear from parliament in Dresden and the AfD would already have an absolute majority with a result of around 40 percent.
Sociologist Rosa points out that the focus on the AfD, and the way in which supporters of different parties are now gathering in a counter-movement, will not necessarily work to shrink the party. “AfD, AfD, AfD before and after is not the right way now,” Rosa said in an interview. The other parties must put their own positions in the spotlight, he believes. That alone is a fruitful counter-movement for a party in which the extremist camp, “at least racist, and with fascist elements”, has gained the upper hand.
Also read
Politician calls for ban of AfD, after right-wing extremist plans to deport asylum seekers and ‘maladjusted’