Putin’s next coup

The rapid rise of the AfD and other populist parties in the East suggests that approach has backfired. Both the Greens and the FDP, the smallest of the three parties in Germany’s national coalition, face the possibility of being shut out of all three state parliaments, according to the recent polling. To gain seats, parties have to garner at least five percent of the vote. 

“The democratic parties — the SPD, CDU and even the Greens — never really managed to establish themselves in the East in the same way they did in the West and that makes it a lot easier of course for a party like the AfD to slip in an take advantage of a more volatile electorate,” said Johannes Kieß, a sociologist at the University of Leipzig. 

Even though reunification fundamentally transformed the economy of the former East Germany, raising living standards to a level unfathomable under communism, resentment over the West’s de-facto takeover of the country remains palpable in many corners.  Since reunification, the region has lost 15 percent of its population as many former East Germans, in particular women, moved west. 

Frustration over such developments is often amplified by national politicians who treat the region, which is today only one-fifth the size of the former West Germany in terms of population, as “the other.” 

“One has to explain things a bit more in the East than in the West, but I’m happy to do so and like going there,” CDU leader Friedrich Merz told an interviewer in May, referring to his party’s hard stance on Russia.

At the time, Merz said he was aiming for first place in all three states, but that’s now likely out of reach. Even in Saxony, where the CDU appears to be leading by a thin margin, the AfD is ahead in some recent polls.