Populists poised for victory in east German polls as Scholz faces rout

Olaf Scholz pitched up in east Germany this week to rally his embattled Social Democrats ahead of state elections on Sunday. He could barely be heard above the shouts of “liar”, “warmonger” and “send him to the front”.

The chancellor had come to Jena to boost the flagging fortunes of a party that polls suggest is heading for a drubbing in the September 1 elections in Saxony and Thuringia.

But he ended up facing a wall of boos, jeers and whistles from locals furious at last Friday’s terror attack in Solingen and his perceived failure to tackle what they see as its root cause: irregular immigration.

“Olaf! How many more dead Germans do you want to see?” read one placard held aloft in Jena’s market square. “Scholz and his gang are Germany’s great disgrace,” shouted one man.

The attack in Solingen, where a suspected Isis operative stabbed three people to death, is casting a long shadow over elections that even before that incident, were expected to mark a triumph for populist parties of the left and right and a disaster for Scholz’s coalition government.

Polls suggest the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could make history by coming first in both Saxony and Thuringia — the first time the party will have won state elections in its 11-year history.

Scholz, who walked on stage to Guns N’ Roses anthem “Paradise City”, was insistent things would change after Solingen.

The government would deport Syrian and Afghan refugees who had committed serious crimes, crack down hard on illegal immigration and “counter terrorism with all our strength and the utmost rigour”, he said.

But it failed to placate the protesters. “Scholz should never have become chancellor,” said Steffen Hirschfeld, the boss of a small engineering company near Jena. “With him, everything’s going to shit.”

Hirschfeld’s list of complaints was long: Scholz’s government had stopped importing Russian oil and gas while turning off Germany’s last remaining nuclear power stations, driving up energy costs; taxes were too high and infrastructure crumbling.

“They’re spending too much taxpayers’ money on aid to Ukraine and asylum-seekers,” he added.

Many voters in Saxony and Thuringia are fed up with a government that for them is synonymous with high inflation, surging petrol and electricity prices and endless internecine bickering.

Voters across Germany were left fuming by a law pushed by the Greens last year to replace gas boilers with heat pumps, a move they saw as interference in their private realm.

But the AfD is not the only populist party to profit from the widespread dissatisfaction with Scholz’s government.

A new leftwing outfit, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), might do so well on Sunday that it will form part of the next government — either in Saxony or Thuringia, or possibly both. That would be remarkable for a party that was only established seven months ago.

Wagenknecht is a former communist-turned-bestselling author who has been a fixture of German far-left politics for nearly 30 years. Last year she broke from Die Linke, the leftwing party she dominated for years, and in January founded her own eponymous party.

Apart from its calls for social justice, an end to German aid for Ukraine and a clampdown on illegal immigration, the party is something of a black box.

“It’s just a personality cult, tailored to the person of Sahra Wagenknecht,” said Hendrik Träger, a political scientist at Leipzig University. “She’s not standing in Sunday’s elections, but her face is on all of BSW’s posters.”

But that might be enough to ensure the party’s success. Appearing in the small east German town of Rudolstadt last week she was greeted with the kind of acclaim normally reserved for schlager singers and football stars.

“You can feel it, it’s a new movement,” she told the audience. Scholz’s government was “woeful, lamentable”. “We need fundamental change . . . we need a new wind in Berlin.”

Grit Eichhorn, a Rudolstadt resident, is typical of the disgruntled easterners now contemplating a vote for the BSW.

“The state taxes us to the hilt, the price of petrol is through the roof and we can’t afford social care,” she said. “Something’s got to give.”

Eichhorn said she believed Wagenknecht could bring about a wende, or turnaround — a word normally used to refer to the overthrow of communism and the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. “She’s the kind of person who can change things — and we need change.”

In all of Germany’s postwar history, hard-left and hard-right parties have never been as strong as they are right now in eastern Germany. Some polls suggest that, taken together, the BSW and AfD are favoured by 50 per cent of voters in Thuringia and Saxony.

In the east, conservatives, social democrats, greens and liberals are being squeezed by both political extremes in a kind of pincer movement, as the centre ground becomes ever smaller, more crowded and more precarious.

“The old party system that has existed since our [postwar] constitution was passed 75 years ago no longer really works,” said Thomas Kemmerich, leader of the liberal FDP in Thuringia. “All the main parties are in serious decline.”

Träger said this process was more advanced in places such as Thuringia because eastern voters “are less likely to be affiliated with particular parties” than their counterparts in the west and are more willing to switch their allegiance from one election to the next.

Even now, 34 years after reunification, big-tent parties like the SPD have failed to put down deep roots in the lands of the former communist Germany. “The parties are not so strongly anchored [here],” Träger said.

That leads to increasingly volatile election results and unstable coalitions that rarely last more than one term. This is particularly the case in Thuringia and Saxony, which both face an uncertain future after their respective elections.

All the other parties have ruled out any co-operation with the AfD, whose Thuringian and Saxon branches have been designated “right-wing extremist” by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

But after Sunday, forming a viable government without AfD participation will be harder than ever before.

Experts attribute easterners’ voting behaviour — and in particular their antipathy towards the Greens — to the region’s recent history.

Reunification brought mass unemployment, social upheaval and psychological trauma. Even now, average wages and pensions are lower than in the west, and the asset base smaller.

For that reason, the Greens’ plan to restrict gas boilers and ban diesel cars are even less popular in the east than in the west.

“The east Germans are very sensitive to failed policies that leave them out of pocket and perhaps that’s why they react more emotionally and impulsively,” said Mario Voigt, CDU leader in Thuringia.

He also identified two “inflection points”: the refugee crisis of 2015-16, when the government of former chancellor Angela Merkel allowed in more than 1mn migrants mainly from the Middle East and north Africa, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In the first, east Germans felt that the state wasn’t fulfilling its obligations, and in the second, that it was doing too much,” he said, making them more susceptible to the messages of populist parties.

Meanwhile, Björn Höcke, the firebrand AfD leader in Thuringia, is enjoying his moment in the sun.

“Migration is the mother of all crises,” Höcke, who was recently fined €17,000 for using banned Nazi slogans, told a crowd in the town of Suhl last week. “We’re part of an experiment which ends with the annihilation of the German people,” he added.

To resounding cheers, Höcke demanded a “180 degree turnaround in immigration policy”. “We need to send a message from the east,” he said. “We have to turn the tide for the whole of Germany.”

Data visualisation by Jonathan Vincent