German conservative party wins its first state election

The right-leaning party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, on Sunday snatched the most votes in a multi-party local election in eastern Germany’s Thuringia state. In a similar election in the neighboring state of Saxony, the AfD received about as much support as one of Germany’s largest parties, the right-leaning Christian Democratic Union. The CDU came second place behind AfD in Thuringia. AfD’s candidate won roughly 33.5 percent of the entire vote in Thuringia and the party’s candidate in Saxony nabbed 31.5 percent of all votes, the party said in a statement. A third state in eastern Germany, Brandenburg, will hold an election Sept. 22. The national election is a year away.

What does this mean? The two conservative parties’ showings are a rebuke to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The PM’s left-leaning Social Democratic Party, which gathered under 10 percent of the votes, according to a German pollster. The German media outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the results were alarming for Scholz and the German left. AfD has reportedly been under domestic surveillance for suspected extremism.

Why might these parties be seeing this support? Both AfD and CDU push for stronger border security more than Scholz and the SDU party do. Their strong showings in Thuringia and Saxony follow an incident in the city of Solingen last month where an alleged Islamic extremist went on a stabbing spree, killing three and injuring eight. Solingen is in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. ISIS reportedly claimed credit for the attack. Chancellor Scholz promised to expel dangerous illegal immigrants after the attack.

Dig deeper: Read Brad Littlejohn’s column in WORLD Opinions about how Europe as a whole is trending toward the right, politically speaking.