As populists rise, German traditional conservative CDU shifts rightward | Eastern NC Now

As the anti-immigration populist-nationalist Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) continues to climb in the polls, the new leadership of the traditional conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is moving rightward, jettisoning remaining Merkel loyalists from key positions.  During her tenure, Angela Merkel had pulled the party leftward on a variety of issues.

The most important change has been the recent replacement of dogmatic Merkel loyalist and progressive Mario Czaja at the CDU's key post of Secretary General with an anti-immigration hardliner from the party's right wing,  Carsten Linnermann.  The change was directed by CDU chairman Friedrich Merz, who is himself considerably to the right of where Merkel was.  Czaja has been a key stalwart of a policy of refusing to work with the AfD while LInnermann is thought to be more open to a cooperation between the parties.

The AfD now polls at 22%, the second most popular party in Germany behind the CDU/CSU, but if the CDU and CSU are polled separately, the AfD is Germany's most popular party.  The polls now show the AfD at 22%, the CDU at 21%, and the Bavaria-based CSU at 5%.  On the left, the governing SPD is at 18%.  Polls also show that the AfD is increasingly attracting younger, better educated, and wealthier voters.

In the state of Thuringia, which votes in a state election next year, the AfD leads in the polls with 32%, ten points ahead of its nearest competitor.  Also interesting in the Thuringian poll, a prospective new populist left party that former Left Party parliamentary leader Sahra Wagenkercht is said to be organizing, running on an anti-immigration, anti-woke, anti-green agenda, could achieve a governing populist majority with the AfD in Thuringia.

The populist right's rise in support is not limited to the AfD.  In Germany's smallest and most left leaning state, the city-state of Bremen, elections two months ago saw a huge surge by a local populist right party, Citizens in Rage, which has consistently won one of the state's 84 parliament seats for three straight elections, but this time rocketed to ten seats.  Citizens in Rage campaigned against illegal immigration and the green agenda and called for reducing the powers of the EU.  Meanwhile, the biggest loser in that election was the far left Green Party.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/afd-ascent-prompts-conservative-reshuffling-in-cdu/

As the immigration issue heats up in Germany, the state of Bavaria, led by a coalition of the conservative CSU and the even more conservative Free Voters, has announced the state government is implementing border checks for illegal aliens on its external borders, going farther than Texas has in the US to supplement weak federal border security.

https://rmx.news/germany/german-state-of-bavaria-to-increase-checks-on-austrian-and-czech-borders-to-curb-illegal-immigration/