German Election: Is AfD Still “Far” Right After Major Gains?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

The Feb. 23 German national election witnessed solid gains for the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The party doubled its vote share to more than 20 per cent and surged into second place. They are now behind only to the centrist-right Christian Democrats (CDU) under prospective incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz. They are stronger than all the other parties, including the ruling Social Democrats (SPD), who lost power. Will this achievement  mean “quasi”-regime change in Germany?

In elections to the 630-member Bundestag, or federal parliament, German voters cast two votes. The first is to elect a representative for their local constituency, like in a Canadian election: the candidate with the most “first past the post” votes wins the seat.

The second vote is for a party list, as in many European countries. The refinement of the German system is that the overall membership of the Bundestag is designed to be proportional to the second vote. So parties with fewer seats than their popular national vote are “topped up” to reach that level of representation.

There are two last items that affect the assignment of seats. The first is that a party needs to cross a five per cent threshold in the second vote to get party list seats. So the seats are awarded proportionally only to the parties that cross the threshold, based on their share of second votes. The other detail is that a party that wins three or more seats in the first vote does not have to meet the threshold and keeps those seats.

Because parties who do not win five per cent of the nationwide vote or win three constituency seats are excluded, the actual share of seats is usually a little higher for the parties that do qualify. Once the calculations are complete, since no party ever wins a majority, they typically spend several weeks in coalition negotiations.

Immigration was certainly the main issue this year. Apart from the AfD, two other anti-immigration parties, the right-of-centre Free Democrats and the old-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, ran but fell just short of the five percent hurdle to make it into parliament. Between the two of them, a tenth of the anti-immigrant electorate will go unrepresented in this Bundestag. Altogether, then, almost one third of the voters abandoned the establishment parties.

According to the BfV, the number of individuals classified as “dangerous Islamists” has increased drastically, rising from 550 in 2015 to over 2,000 in 2025, representing an almost fourfold increase in just ten years. The recurring violence, including mass murders, and thwarted plots have driven voters, including the young, to the openly anti-immigration parties.

The results saw the CDU win 28.5 per cent of the vote, followed by the AfD at 20.8, the SPD at 16.4, the Greens with 11.6, and the Left at 8.8. The CDU won 208 seats, the AfD 152, the SPD 120, the Greens 85, and the Left 64. The CDU scored its second worst post-war result. As for the AfD, leader Alice Weidel told supporters “next time we'll come first.”

A look at the electoral map illustrates the stark divide between the former East and West Germany. The CDU has captured almost all the formerly West German seats outside of a few cities, while in the old German Democratic Republic the AfD controls almost all the seats outside Berlin (where the Left, populists with links to the Communist party of the old East Germany, has gained some).

The election came against a backdrop of the Trump administration in Washington moving ahead with peace talks on Ukraine, something the AfD also favours. Trump’s own election, and Elon Musk’s embrace of the AfD, has given many Germans “permission” to vote for the party.

Currently, the AfD is likely to be frozen out of any governing coalition as other parties are refusing to work with them.” Will this continue? The party is no longer just a political home for older right-wing Germans. In broadening its base, its young AfD activists are an extension of a party that grown since its founding in 2013. A third of voters aged 16-35 chose the AfD.

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) in 2023 announced it had found that the AfD youth wing, known as the Young Alternative (JA), was an extremist organization.

Yet the leader of the AfD’s youth wing is confident that the mainstream parties’ reluctance to include the AfD in a coalition will end.  “I am certain that this so-called ‘firewall’ will stop after this election,” Hannes Gnauck stated, referring to the stance long taken by Germany’s mainstream parties to work together to freeze out the party.

 “The CDU with Friedrich Merz won’t work together with the AfD,” but “there will be a CDU after Friedrich Merz, and this CDU will have to work together with the AfD.”

Gnaucke pointed to the rising support for the AfD among Germany’s youngest voters. “We see that the upcoming generation in Germany is voting often for the AfD, because this generation is directly confronted with the big problems of our society -- migration problems, migration dynamics. They are also confronted with the economy.”

The current status quo is untenable. Does the future belong to the AfD?