AfD is relentlessly marching towards power in Germany:
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came up short of victory in eastern state elections in Saxony and Brandenburg on Sunday, but still finished with its highest vote share ever, Politico reports.
Why it matters: The anti-immigrant, nationalist AfD is one of several far-right parties across Europe that have made significant gains at the expense of the political establishment, including in May’s European Parliament elections. Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) remained the strongest party in Saxony with about 32{c54197dde12df2f558a2650e1cd4ae2483dbb80239d1e9c0b6d466bbef15f4fd}, while the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) held onto first place in Brandenburg with 27.2{c54197dde12df2f558a2650e1cd4ae2483dbb80239d1e9c0b6d466bbef15f4fd}, according to initial results.
Worth noting: The results are being viewed as a victory for AfD, but all parties have sworn not to work with the far right in a coalition government. That could be a difficult promise to keep, however, with vote share dispersed across a number of smaller parties.
The so-called “mainstream” parties will refuse to work with them, but they won’t be able to function effectively together because they have nothing in common beyond not being nationalists. For example, some of the obvious fracture points in the rossoverde alliance of PD and M5 in Italy are already beginning to expose themselves.