-Analysis-
FRANKFURT — Nearly two million people live in the German state of Thuringia. Of these two million, around 400,000 (or 34.2%) cast votes for the far-right AfD party in Sunday’s regional elections. That’s roughly the same as the population of a few neighborhoods in Berlin.
The crucial question after this election is: what do these 400,000 votes mean?
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The dominant interpretations of the results suggest that they represent a historical turning point in German politics. That the people have spoken and that everything is going to change, both in terms of support for Ukraine and in terms of migration policy. According to some articles, the rise of the far-right is an unstoppable global trend embodied by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, by Marine Le Pen and Björn Höcke, the AfD founder in Thuringia.
The Eastern parts of Germany, they say, are the avant-garde: what happens there today is what will happen everywhere tomorrow.
But does this analysis really hold up, when we take a closer look at the context?
We might find out that what the people actually want is not clear at all. Plus, you can’t be constantly asking the people what they think about this or that issue. Well, you could — but then you would no longer have time to govern because of the never-ending electoral process.
In a representative democracy, the will of the people is determined by the act of voting. More precisely: voters transfer their decision-making power to elected representatives for a predetermined period of time. This is what we mean when we quote the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) that enunciates that all state power emanates from the people.
Still a minority
Let’s be very clear about this: two million Thuringians are not “the people,” nor are the four million eligible voters from Saxony. There are 84 million people living in Germany, and what they want will become clear in the federal election next year.
AfD is only getting 16 to 17% nationwide.
In the current polls, AfD is only getting 16 to 17% nationwide. And even if the party claims the opposite, they are far from being a majority. The AfD’s positions on issues are thus the positions of a minority. The fact that they are a very loud minority does not change that. At the ballot box, what matters is vote totals, not decibel level.
We could also start asking ourselves whether the claim that the East sets the trend for the entire Republik is correct. The AfD party’s poll ratings have not been rising since the beginning of the year. In fact, the opposite is the case: they have fallen.
So far, it does not look like their was an impact on the election results from the terrorist attack in Solingen, a stabbing spree where a reported member of the Islamic State killed three people and wounded eight more. The results are not as clear as they seem at first glance. The AfD is the party of the rural areas but, even in the East, bigger cities often have other parties leading the polls.
The last of a dying breed?
As for political developments in other countries: Boris Johnson has been voted out, and the Social Democrats of the Labour Party are now back in power in Britain. Marine Le Pen lost the last parliamentary election to a left-wing coalition. And it looks possible that Donald Trump will lose the White House race again in November and Kamala Harris, who is left-wing by American standards, will become president.
Don’t assume that their voting behavior expresses some kind of prophetic wisdom.
Looking at the international environment, the assumption that the German East is a political avant-garde looks very questionable: it might just as well be the last of a dying breed.
Perhaps the 400,000 AfD voters in Thuringia do not represent a shift to the right or a desire to overthrow the system: they just represent themselves. That does not mean that they should be ignored. That is hardly ever a good idea in a democracy. But perhaps one should not assume that their voting behavior expresses some kind of prophetic wisdom.
The citizens of Thuringia (and Saxony) have elected their representatives. As is in their right. May they be happy with their decision. Because it is a decision, and like every decision, it will have consequences. It is rather unlikely that Thuringia will become more attractive as a business location as a result of this election. And this time they won’t be able to blame it on the government.
