Germany's Centre Re-sorts as AfD Breakthrough Looms
A new INSA poll found 69 percent of Germans expect the far-right AfD to win at least one state premiership in this autumn's regional elections. The party leads in Saxony-Anhalt at 41 percent ahead of the September 6 vote and tops national polls near 27 percent, prompting the centre to re-sort: the Greens and CDU signalled a possible rapprochement as the SPD weakens, while the governing coalition feuded over BAfoeG student-aid reform. Senior AfD figures, meanwhile, prepared to attend Russia's St. Petersburg economic forum.
German voters increasingly expect a far-right breakthrough this autumn. An INSA poll for Bild am Sonntag found that 69 percent expect the AfD to win at least one state premiership in the September elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin, with 28 percent expecting wins in several states and only 16 percent expecting none. The party leads in Saxony-Anhalt at 41 percent ahead of the September 6 vote and has prepared a plan to fill 150 to 200 senior administrative posts there; nationally it now tops polls at around 27.5 percent, ahead of the CDU/CSU on roughly 23 percent.
The findings sharpened a public debate over how to contain the party. The same poll found 40 percent favouring CDU cooperation with the Left Party to keep the AfD from power against 36 percent backing CDU-AfD cooperation, while 47 percent opposed banning the AfD and 38 percent supported a ban -- a measure of the strain on the "Brandmauer," the centrist firewall against the far right.
That strain is reshaping alliances at the centre. With the SPD and FDP weakening, the Greens and CDU signalled a tentative rapprochement: Green co-leader Franziska Brantner praised the CDU lineage of Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Wolfgang Schaeuble, and CDU officials said many old conflicts had eased, though climate and migration still divide them. The governing coalition, meanwhile, feuded over student aid: Research Minister Dorothee Baer (CSU) said the planned BAfoeG reform lacked coalition support and might not pass, while the SPD insisted it was agreed and funded and warned the Union against causing "chaos."
Beyond the polls, senior AfD figures deepened their ties with Moscow, with Saxony chairman Jorg Urban and Baden-Wuerttemberg chairman Markus Frohnmaier set to attend the St. Petersburg economic forum in early June, which German business is rejoining after a four-year boycott over the invasion of Ukraine. Away from politics, bomb-disposal teams in Osnabrueck defused two World War II bombs, forcing some 1,600 residents from their homes for hours, and Hamburg held a vote on a future Olympic bid.