Germany’s Far-right AFD Wins First Local Election as Support for Anti-immigration Party at Record High – News18

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) has won its first district council election in a watershed moment for Germany’s politics.

The eastern town of Sonneberg in Thuringia province elected Robert Sesselmann, a lawyer and regional lawmaker, to the post of district administrator with 52.8% of the vote, The Guardian reported.

The victory came as a boost to the anti-immigration party despite appeals from mainstream parties for voters to rally behind the incumbent candidate, Joergen Koepper from the conservative CDU.

The Thuringia branch of the AFD has been classified as right-wing extremist by intelligence services. The group is led by Björn Höcke, who is considered to be part of the AFD’s far right wing, which was officially disbanded but is still widely believed to exist.

Experts say that the win provides the far-right party with the much-needed boost in its efforts to expand its influence across Germany.

The state parliament elections are scheduled next year in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. Recent surveys put support for the AFD at a record 18 to 20 percent, neck-and-neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and behind only the conservative CDU/CSU bloc.

The report shows AFD polling even better in the former communist East German states of Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony.

The Alternative für Deutschland was created in 2013 as an anti-euro outfit and morphed into an anti-Islam and anti-immigration party. It has benefited from growing discontent with Scholz’s three-party coalition amid concerns about inflation, affordability of the government’s climate plans and high immigration.

The party stunned the political establishment when it took around 13 percent of votes in the 2017 general elections, catapulting its lawmakers into the German parliament.