Breakthrough local gov't win for populist nationalist right in Germany | Eastern NC Now

AfD defeats CDU to win first local district control

ENCNow

Germany's populist / nationalist anti-immigration Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) has been running as the second largest party in the country in multiple polls for the last few months, crossing the line of 20% support nationally and being the most popular party of all in the eastern states.  Now it has made a critical breakthrough in winning control of its first local government at the district level.

Germany's state and local elections are scattered throughout the year, but it was the runoff in the Thuringian district of Sonneberg yesterday that captured national attention.  Sonneberg's incumbent district administrator, a member of the traditional conservative Christian Democratic Union was soundly defeated by challenger Robert Sesselman of the populist nationalist anti-immigration AfD by vote of 52.8% to 47.2%.  It is the first AfD victory giving control of a unit of local government.  After Sesselman led in the first round, all the other major parties called upon their members to vote for the CDU incumbent in the runoff to stop the AfD, but this tactic failed.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/afd-scores-historic-victory-for-german-conservatives/

https://rmx.news/germany/political-earthquake-germanys-afd-party-posts-historic-win-in-thuringia-scores-first-district-administrator/

Thuringia has its state election next year, as does (at different times) Saxony, and Brandenburg, all in eastern Germany, and the AfD leads in the polls in all of them.  


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( June 27th, 2023 @ 3:41 pm )
 
At first glance, this just not seem to be as big a deal as the headlines indicate, but when you read the details, it does seem to be a big deal. These district administrators constitute the only level of government where it is necessary to win a majority of the votes in a race. In a multi-party country with seven parties now represented in the national parliament, and a couple more in state parliaments, most politics operates by forming coalitions. In this race, in spite of all the other national parties working against the AfD, they still won, and defeated an incumbent. Since that incumbent was from the next most conservative party, that made it an even tougher race, and they still pulled it off.

The other thing that is particularly interesting is that this race seems to have opened the discussion within the CDU about being willing to form coalition governments in the future with the AfD. That is important because the only way the math works for a government of the right nationally, or probably in most if not all states, is for the CDU and AfD to work together. At one time, a CDU / Free Democrat coalition had a shot at a majority but that math does not work any more. The traditional right and the populist right have formed successful coalitions in much of Europe, including the just formed coalition government in Finland. Germany and France are the two major countries where the traditional right has snubbed the populist / nationalist right, but maybe that is about to change in Germany. The polls have been showing the CDU as the most popular party in Germany, with the AfD second, and together being able to form a comfortable majority.



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