The ‘Alternative for Deutschland’ (AfD) party has achieved a landmark victory in the German state of Thuringia, winning a district council election for the first time in a moment not dissimilar to the first UK Independence Party (UKIP) council win of 2015.
The AfD’s candidate, Robert Sesselman, ousted Jurgen Köpper of the leftist Christian Democrats (CDU) – the party of the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel – receiving 52.8 percent of the vote in Thuringia’s Sonneberg district.
The victory demonstrates the party’s recent momentum, argued Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD in Thuringia, adding, “[a]nd then we’ll prepare for the state elections in the east, where we can really create a political earthquake.”
The populist party is currently polling at 20 percent nationally, making it the second most popular party, and beating German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SDP).
The AfD is Germany’s only significant right-wing party, having been originally founded by a small group of disenfranchised CDU voters and academics in 2013. The party was first elected to the German parliament – the Bundestag – in 2017. It is is known for its Euroscepticism, anti-immigration, and anti-vaccine mandate policies, campaigning under the motto: “Germany. But normal.”