Germany’s far-right AfD surges in eastern heartland vote, but far-left set to win

ERFURT, Germany — Germany’s far-right AfD scores strong gains in the ex-Communist eastern state of Thuringia, home to one of its most radical figures, beating mainstream parties such as Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU, early exit polls show.

While popular premier Bodo Ramelow’s far-left Die Linke party easily wins with about 30 percent, the Alternative for Germany scored at least 23%, according to public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, more than doubling its result in the previous election in 2014.

This put the anti-immigration party in second place, narrowly ahead of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, who win about 22%, and far ahead of her coalition partners, the once powerful Social Democrats (SPD), who score only 8%.

The AfD’s strong result comes despite widespread criticism after an October 9 attack in the eastern city of Halle, where a suspected neo-Nazi gunman tried and failed to storm a synagogue then shot dead two people outside.

After the bloody attack, the commissioner for combating anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, like many other critics, argued that the AfD had trafficked in incendiary anti-Jewish sentiment.

The Thuringia campaign has been marked by anger, threats and recriminations, with CDU candidate Mike Mohring labeling the AfD’s local leader, the nationalist hardliner Bjoern Hoecke, a “Nazi.”

A triumphant Hoecke tells supporters today that the state, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, had voted for a second revolution, a “Transition 2.0,” and delivered “a clear ‘no’ to the ossified party landscape.”

— AFP