There is a familiar ritual whenever voters in Europe turn towards a populist or radical party. The result is declared “deeply worrying”. Politicians express their “alarm”. Commentators invoke the 1930s. The voters are then subjected to a lecture about the dangers of extremism. And so it’s turning out with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany.
The German state goes to the polls on September 6th. The latest Infratest dimap poll puts the AfD on 41 per cent, against just 24 per cent for the governing CDU. The SPD is on 7 per cent, while the Greens and FDP are struggling to clear the five per cent threshold to even get into parliament. That would be an extraordinary result. At the previous state election in 2021, the CDU won 37.1 per cent and the AfD 20.8 per cent.
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