The Success of the AfD: Why Is the Right Wing So Strong in Eastern Germany?
Comparatively younger politicians, like the 46-year-old governor of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer of the CDU, are unable to fill that need. And neither, apparently, is CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet. Indeed, many local CDU chapters would rather have seen Markus Söder, the center-right governor of Bavaria, as the center-right candidate for chancellor. His brash style is far more suited to the state.
But not all of the blame falls on Laschet’s shoulders. Vorländer says that the CDU has been losing supporters in the region since 1994. “First, they became non-voters, then NPD voters … and now they cast their ballots for the AfD.” The right-wing party, he says, has unified the region’s widespread animosity toward Berlin, with the refugee crisis having functioned as an accelerant. The AfD, he says, have become “properly established” in eastern Germany.
Still, there are reasons to believe that the AfD has hit the ceiling of its potential in Saxony. As such, the most pressing question is how the other parties can return to the strength they enjoyed previously in the region. Vorländer believes the CDU needs new faces and more local involvement.
That, though, is something the party has tried before. In the last four years, Kretschmer has held almost 90 events of different formats, all of which were aimed at establishing a more direct line of communication with voters. They included state cabinet members, regional leaders and mayors. The effort, though, didn’t seem to help much in the voting booth and Kretschmer constantly found himself confronted with significant resistance. In Freiberg, for example, he and his retinue were besieged by a group of Free Saxons – to the point that they ran over the foot of a female police officer during their hasty escape.
Still, Vorländer believes that Kretschmer’s strategy was ultimately the correct one. He believes the CDU should make sure they are present throughout the region and invest heavily in meeting voters’ needs for a fatherly figure at the top. You have to go to the places “where it hurts,” he says.