German Chancellor Friedrich Merz celebrates the first electoral test with his settlement with bitterness last May. The appointment for the renewal of 396 municipal administrations in the industrial region of northern Rhine -See, the most populous in Germany, yesterday saw an unexpected comeback of the far -right party alternative fur deutschland (Afd), which Tallona – and worries – the party of the German leader, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The center -right party in government (in coalition with the SPD) holds, but with difficulty.
The Cancelliere CDU party holds, celebrates the AFD
With 34.6 percent, CDU starts to confirm the result of five years ago, around 33 percent, even if it records a slight loss (around 0.1 percent). The president of Land Hendrik Wuest of the CDU spoke of a “good result” for his party which remains “first political force in the municipal”, even if “he must make us reflect and cannot make us sleep peacefully”. Because good news ends here. To celebrate the performance of the municipalities is the Ultradestra of AFD: with 16.5 percent it grows by 11.4 percent and confirms the trend that emerged in the latest federals.
Almost certainly we will go to the ballot in what was once a stronghold of the SPD, Gelsenkirchen, with over 250 thousand inhabitants: here the social democratic candidate, Andrea Henze, will have to deal with the Candidate of the AFD, Norbert Emmerich in two weeks. Despite the other large cities (Cologne, DueSiseldorf, Dortmund, Bielefeld) the party is far from the ballots, for the Afd the result is important above all because it comes from the northern-seeing Rhine, the most populous federated state in Germany, located in the west of the country. A region traditionally distant from the electoral base of the far -right party, which is concentrated above all in the Eastern Landers.
The ascent of the AFD in the region (where a few weeks ago four of his candidates died in circumstances still to be clarified) shows how the far -right party is no longer confined to the former Germany of the East: he also rooted in the historical heart of German democracy. And the goal declared by the AFD leader Alice Weidel appears more and more concrete: to transform the party into Germany’s main political force.
The collapse of the green
Instead, the consent for social democracy (22.5 percent) continues to crumble: the SPD may have lost almost two percentage points but it is a matter of worsening a result that was already dramatic five years ago, with a flexion of 7.1. The Greens, on the other hand, have undergone a remarkable drop: from 20 percent to 13. Among the other national parties, the left (Die Linke) is the only one in addition to Afd to have increased its consensus, by about two percentage points: it is around 5 percent.
The electoral return of the municipalities demonstrates once again what a new political reality is taking shape in Germany: the center still maintains its hold, but the forces at the end of the spectrum are increasingly visible and rooted. And they worry the Bundestag as well as Palazzo Berlaymont.
