Charlemagne | Elections in Thuringia and Brandenburg

The transformation of German politics

Two more elections, and two more triumphs for the anti-euro Alternative for Germany

By A.K. | POTSDAM

THE place to be on election nights these days in Germany is not inside the respective state parliament but at whatever restaurant the Alternative for Germany has rented that evening. So it was two weeks ago in Dresden, when Saxons voted and swept the Alternative, an anti-euro and generally conservative party founded only last year, into its first state parliament. So it was again yesterday in Potsdam and Erfurt, when Brandenburgers and Thuringians voted and gave the Alternative two even greater triumphs: 10.6% in Thuringia and 12.2% in Brandenburg. I chose to hear the evening's first estimate at 6PM with supporters and leaders of the Alternative in an elegant restaurant inside a neo-Baroque courtyard near Brandenburg's newly restored state parliament. When the bar charts came up on the screen, the room erupted in a roar and then shook for minutes of clapping and howling.

All the patterns the Saxony election outlined, the Thuringia and Brandenburg elections reinforced. All the mainstream parties lost voters to the Alternative. The centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led nationally by chancellor Angela Merkel, lost the highest absolute number. It also drew voters from other parties, so that overall it strengthened its results in both states, coming in first in Thuringia, where it governs, and second in Brandenburg. But it faces the largest longer-term threat from the Alternative (many of whose leaders used to be CDU members), which increasingly has a policy platform that reads like a CDU programme of a decade ago: freer markets, more support for traditional families, tougher responses to crime and mass immigration. So far, the CDU has tried to ignore the Alternative. That is no longer an option.

But the other parties need also take note. One surprise, for example, is how many voters from The Left, a party that descends from the communist party of the former East Germany, migrated to the Alternative. There are small points of overlap--both The Left and the Alternative, for example, want more referendums and direct demoracy. But on paper, the two should be on opposite extremes of the spectrum. In reality, as it turned out in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia (all former regions of East Gemany), the supporters of The Left often have conservative instincts when it comes to immigration (ie, foreigners), crime and families. If they chose The Left in the past as a form of protest, they now choose the Alternative.

So it seems that the Alternative is here to stay. It represents "the transformation of German politics," as its Thuringian leader said today at a press conference in Berlin. It is nothing like the Pirates, another protest party that briefly surged in recent years (mainly on geeky issues such as online copyright) before evaporating again in chaos and disinterest. The Alternative is organised and its leaders are articulate and disciplined, even if its policies (vis-a-vis Russia, for instance) are still evolving. "We tell it as it is," said the Alternative's top man in Brandenburg, Alexander Gauland, whereas the mainstream parties use a sterlised language that strikes many ordinary Germans as evasive. German policy overall will remain stable; but German politics is sure to get a lot more interesting.

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