Politico reports:

Germany’s far right looks to have claimed its biggest electoral success since World War II, winning a regional vote in the country’s East on Sunday, according to an initial projection.

Triumph for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), in a region that was under communist control during the Cold War, is a huge blow for Germany’s political center — not least for the three parties in the coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which appear to have suffered significant losses.

The AfD came in first in the state of Thuringia with about 31 percent of the vote, according to the early projection — an outcome that, if realized, will prompt much soul-searching as to how the center failed to stop the far right’s electoral re-emergence, despite the AfD’s growing extremism.

“For us, it’s a historic success,” said Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s national leaders.

In the more populous state of Saxony, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) appears, for now, to have just staved off the far right, coming in first with around 31 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll, with the AfD trailing close behind.

A new populist-left party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), is set to finish third in both states, according to the early projections.

The surge of parties on the extremes of the political spectrum is likely to be seen as another blow to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s already weak, tripartite coalition government.

The three coalition parties — Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) — suffered losses, according to early projections. In Thuringia, the Greens and the FDP appear to have both crashed out of the state parliament, failing to meet the five-percent threshold necessary to gain seats, according to the early projections. [Continue reading…]