It seems there is not a month that goes by where Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party does not achieve another record polling result, with the party now showing remarkable strength in the West of the country.
As Remix News already reported, the AfD is incredibly strong in the east of Germany, where it tops the polls in each eastern state except one where it sits in second. Support for the right-wing populist party has historically been far weaker in the west of the country, but new polling shows that picture is also rapidly changing.
In a poll out of the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, the AfD has hit a record 19 percent, rising seven percentage points since the last election. That puts the party in third place in that state, where it is behind the Green Party (24 percent) and the CDU (26 percent).
In the other western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, polling showed the AfD scoring a record 16 percent on Thursday, improving by four percentage points compared to the previous poll at the end of last year.
As Remix News reported earlier this month, the AfD achieved record-high support of 22 percent in a nationwide poll, causing the federal government, its official opposition, and the mainstream media to gulp at the prospect of the party gaining greater influence in Berlin.
The AfD’s new polling high of 22 percent came shortly after German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who belongs to the left-wing Social Democrats (SPD), described the record poll figures for the AfD as “worrying.”
During an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF, he stated that the party’s recent results “should not lead us to automatically classify every critical question as populism and right-wing extremism.”
However, Steinmeier did not hesitate to attack the party for contributing to what he called the “brutalization of debate.” He further said there is no room for the “business of fear-mongers in this society” and that Germans must learn to “conduct democratic disputes with each other without breaking out into hatred and agitation.”
