The radical far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) party is more popular among Germans than it has ever been before. In a new opinion poll, the party is the second largest.
Around 20 percent of Germans would vote for AFD if there were elections for the Bundestag today, according to the survey from the public service company ARD. It is the highest support that has been measured for the party in ARD’s surveys.
In recent months, AFD has climbed in public opinion after a multi-year slump. In recent weeks, it has become increasingly clear that the party has overtaken the social democratic SPD, which leads today’s government coalition.
The AFD shook Germany’s political landscape when the party received almost 13 percent of the vote in the 2017 federal election. In the 2021 election, the party retreated to around 10 percent.
The party was classified as “suspected” extremist by the German Constitutional Protection in 2021, but that measure was later rejected in an administrative court in Cologne. The party’s youth union, on the other hand, is classified as a “confirmed” extremist organization, which gives the country’s security service expanded surveillance powers.
Several of the party’s elected representatives have in various ways expressed support for and visited Russia during the war in Ukraine. As such, the party accuses the German government of actively destroying the country’s economy through the sanctions and of wanting to drag Germany into a war.