Has the AfD Hit its Membership Ceiling?
Was the election of Merz in the CDU a sign that the AfD is next in line?
Today a friend shared a graph with me on a poll taken Sunday night after people had voted. It was a poll of people in the main parties and they were asked, “Wie fänden Sie eine Beteiligung der AfD in der nächsten Bundesregierung?” How would you feel about AfD participation in the next federal government? The response options were “nicht gut” not good or “gut” good. As you can see there are some percentage of people who were asked who did not respond. Still, the overall group “Alle” everyone, 68 percent said “not good” and 29 percent said “good.” That is less than a third of the respondents. Even the AfD had 2% of participants who did not approve of their own participation in the Bundestag. I assume that this is because they would not want this particular constitution and government to exist. The other 95% want to participate in this government, which means that they have to try to follow the constitution and they want to influence politics as a mainstream party.
An important thing to note is that 81% of the CDU/CSU Union said they don’t think the AfD should be in this election. So, which of Merz’s policies are they supporting when he has very similar policies on immigrants and would like to see them repatriated elsewhere, although he does not go so far as to say that Germans should also be sent elsewhere if they are not White like the AfD does. I suspect it is because he reiterated that he would not make a deal with the AfD. If 81% of his party does not think they should be in government then he needs to stick to that, or risk a recall, and being ousted.
The three parties who are center left (SPD, die Grünen-Greens) and left (Die Linke-the Left) have an from 92-97% of people agreeing that the AfD should not be in the Federal Government. A good reason for this is that they do not support the German constitution which is illegal in Germany, and because they support Nazi ideology, another illegal thing in Germany. So, why are they allowed to exist? Because the German Constitutional Court has to officially call them a Nazi party, or anti German Constitutional party, and that takes a long time. It is slowly wending its way through the courts. In the meantime, the AfD is trying to stay inside the gray area of policy and behavior as they try to recruit more and more people to their cause.
They have been successful in doubling their numbers since the last election. Clearly they hit a chord with those who would like to return to a simpler Germany. A time when Germany was better. Knowing German history I am wondering which time they are referring to? Is it Germany as feudal lands of unallied and then allied duke and princedoms, as well as kingdoms? Is it Germany during war, or after the defeat in WWI when everyone was starving? And Hitler began his ascendency to power? Is it Germany under the Nazis” Is it Germany divided in two with half suffocated under a paranoid, spying “socialist” dictatorship? Otherwise we just have Democratic, reunited Germany, a loss to Putin was a gain for democracy. In fact, they may just be referring to a time long ago before Germany had any diversity in the population, which would be before Germany partook sending explorers and missionaries to African countries, and prior to their participation in the colonizing of Africa when the population was mostly White? But also had Jews. AfD is against Non-Christians as they define their beliefs, but again, like the Christian Nationalists in the USA, is not following the teachings of Christ for charity, and good will towards others.
They AfD also claims that if German citizens cannot assimilate they should be sent elsewhere where they would presumably fit in better. While that could mean their own party, with its Nazi faction that they try to publicly suppress, although after the election they let 2 Nazi associated members back in, they in fact mean those who do not physically assimilate in or religiously assimilate in. No wonder Alice Weidel, AfD chancellor candidate’s wife Sarah Bossard refuses to leave Switzerland to join her wife in Germany. Switzerland has 40% immigration population and is considered a good destination in Europe for immigrants. Sarah is an immigrant from Sri Lanka and has brownish skin. She would be trapped among the AfD party members who are against who she is.
Up until election day, a third of the German population was undecided about who to vote for. In just weeks before the election the far Left party (Die Linke) more than doubled their share of the vote, because young women voted for them because of their environmental, peace and pro-immigrant positions. They have successfully made the case for many that war is not environmental. Many more voted for CDU/CSU union than in the last election instead of for the SPD, and I would say that was a direct reflection of their rejection of Olaf Scholz, who has been a weak leader in a time when Germany, Ukraine, and Europe needed Germany to have a strong leader. Right now Merz is projecting this. Habeck of the Green party perhaps less successfully, although he has governance experience, and has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine. That has many people leaving the Green party because they do not see him being as successful in helping Germany to transition off of fossil fuels. However, he did manage to make sure that without the pipelines to Russia Germany had enough energy to get through the winters, which have been relatively mild. Global warming helping out.
The shifts in party strengths will be re-evaluated over the next four years. It is not my impression from this survey, that the AfD is going to get many more converts, certainly not up to the 50% they would need to be in charge of German government in the next election. Also, given the war-like climate in Europe created by Russia and US President Donald Trump, the older part of the population is going to want to see Germany be strong on defense. That is not the AfDs forte. They are claiming that Russia is an ally and friend and do not see Ukraine as a prevention to the Russian war on Europe spreading to NATO allied countries. Merz is calling for Germany to join with France and England in Nuclear armament. This is going to lead to hard discussions on whether or not Germany will develop its own nuclear weapons after they have shut down the last nuclear power plant. It is too early to tell.
The youth might go more to the right, but in that, it has been more about the young men than the young women. The young women are moving more to the left. Under the AfD, Germans would return to a life like they had in the DDR, where they were in essence a client state of Russias, and children had to learn Russian in school, and perhaps not even their own language. So, would adults, or they would be cut out of good professional prospects. Education might be solely in Russian, and the German language would die. All the people that I know from the DDR, and Poland have anger over using Russian that many Ukrainians have now developed too, as well as all of the Asiatic countries under control of Russia have a portion of their population that regrets losing their indigenous languages. This is what the AfD is setting Germany up for, so not a return to the Golden age of Germany, whenever that is supposed to have been.
In addition to language, a client state sends its goods and gets back what the ruling nation decides to give them. Is that what the German people are bargaining for just to get cheap gas and oil again from Russia? Without the US backing Ukraine, Germany or Europe, what more can they expect? Weidel imagines herself to have a good relationship with Trump and Musk the leaders of the USA, but they will each run their course. Also, many will be turned off by this tainted relationship. There has already been a contingent of the population that has wanted Germany to get rid of US troops and let Germany defend itself. How does the AfD explain this contradiction in cozying up to the Trump administration when those in their party want a pure Germany, not a US client state. So, we have to see what will happen, but I am hoping that the next years in Germany find the AfD and their thinking losing its hold on Germany not gaining.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/6/germanys-far-right-afd-to-expel-members-over-links-to-militant-groups
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/25/afd-readmits-two-politicians-excluded-over-nazi-related-remarks
https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/charts/umfrage-afd/chart_1872968.shtml
Excellent and I will say a bit of hopefulness in your essay. Thank you so much.
Thanks for this very enlightening essay. And along with your thinking about when was Germany better, I ask the same here in the United States, when were we better? This whole “make America great again” schtick is just ridiculous. When were we great? Maybe we were great during World War II in the rebuilding afterwards. Maybe that was our time of greatness. It certainly was not our founding, based on wiping out First Nations people, the revolutionary war was a good thing and the Civil War was a good thing. But our nation’s wealth, which is concentrated among white people was built on slavery both in the North and the South. And then before civil rights came, Black and POC were living lives of terror, not knowing who is going to be lynched next. And so yes, thank you for questioning when was Germany great? Because I question here a lot why we need to make America great again? Based on what? And whose standards?