Far Right Makes Gains In 2 German State Elections As Centrists Hang Onto Power
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won big in this month's Brandenburg and Saxony state elections. A recent poll shows the AfD more popular than ever throughout Germany.
For as long as Germany has been a unified country, since 1990, the center-left Social Democratic Party has helped govern Brandenburg, a state in the country's east that surrounds Berlin. Tina Fischer, an SPD member of Brandenburg's state parliament, is concerned about how long that will last.
On Sept. 1, voters in her town of Zeuthen helped the far-right Alternative for Germany, the AfD, double its share of the vote in Brandenburg from 12.2% to 23.5%, nearly defeating Fischer's party. In the state of Saxony, to Brandenburg's south, the AfD managed to secure 27.5% of the vote, a 17.8% increase over the last election
