German coalition clings on as AfD wins state election

Far-right party claims that victory gives it mandate to govern

- SARAH MARSH, THOMAS ESCRITT

The far right's first victory in a German state election in the post-war era prompted soul-searching in Berlin yesterday, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s battered and unloved coalition looked as if it would hold together.

All three parties in Scholz’s centre-left coalition suffered painful losses while the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a new anti-establishment populist party secured record gains in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony. Mr Scholz, a Social Democrat, described the results as “bitter” but finance minister Christian Lindner rejected suggestions that his neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), who fared the worst of all coalition partners, should quit the government.

With a year to go to national elections, the results are nonetheless likely to foment tensions in a coalition riven by ideological differences and struggling to deal with the fallout from the Ukraine war including a cost of living crisis. The AfD became the first far-right party to win a state legislature election in Germany since the Second World War with its 32.8 per cent showing in Thuringia. And it came a close second, at 30.6 per cent, behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democrats, in neighbouring Saxony.