Top Spot: Reviled ‘Right-Wing’ AfD Now Germany’s Most Popular Party

What a difference a couple of months of lies and betrayals make.

Two days ago, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, led by Alice Weidel, was in a statistical tie with Chancellor-Elect Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU). AfD was, however, still iced out of any government participation, even as Merz lied and finagled his way in efforts to form a coalition government with anyone but them.

The German public, watching Merz’s negotiations go down, their votes for change cast aside in the frenzied deal making, and their few remaining freedoms cast to the wind, had an almost instantaneous case of buyers’ remorse.

As of the poll released this morning, Germans have confirmed they are disillusioned with a government that hasn’t even formed yet, are rejecting the malleable Merz…

Migrations from other parties – esp. CDU/CSU – to AfD are sticky. For a time last year, the novel Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) pulled some AfD voters away, but many of those have returned, and others have come too. This is not a temporary blip.

— eugyppius (@eugyppius1) April 9, 2025

…and perhaps wish they’d been bolder voters instead of patsies. Even the Communists bumped up a couple of points as CDU support drained away.

Barely six weeks after the German federal elections, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has topped a voter survey for the first time ever.

…The latest poll also showed rising support for the hard-left Die Linke party, the successor to the former East German Communist party. Die Linke was up from 9 per cent at the ballot box to 11 per cent in the Ipsos survey.

The results were particularly damning for Merz as CDU leader.

When he first ran for the party leadership in 2018 – unsuccessfully – he said the party could “again reach up to 40 per cent of the vote and halve AfD”.

The voter dynamic is now moving in the opposite direction.

In as much as Merz had broken his immigration promise concerning closing the border almost immediately, he seems to have reconsidered as rising pressure from the anger of German citizens and within his own party over the betrayal became apparent. The CDU campaigned to reform both the process and the handling of those immigrants already in the country. 

Where Merz’s position would be solid for the next few years, his reversal now left CDU members in upcoming regional elections hung out to dry, and they were vocal in opposition.

Consequently, yesterday, the incoming government announced they were ‘pausing’ a UN-sponsored refugee ‘resettlement program’ they’d agreed to continue earlier.

Germany has suspended admission of refugees via a U.N. resettlement programme, the interior ministry said on Tuesday, as a new coalition government likely to restrict immigration prepares to take office.

Migration has been a contentious issue in coalition negotiations between Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the centre-left Social Democrats, which are expected to conclude within weeks.

…The two sides have struck a preliminary agreement to end voluntary federal admission programmes for refugees such as the U.N. programme – the only one currently active – and not to launch any new ones, according to a document seen by Reuters.

…The ministry said 4,711 people had arrived in Germany through the programme since 2024, out of the 13,000 refugees that Germany has promised the European Commission it will take in for 2024 and 2025 combined.

How is it comforting for Germans to know that their government has ‘promised’ the EU they’ll suck-up 13K+ more bodies?

It’s not – the word on the street is ‘remigration.’ AfD added the term to their party manifesto in mid-January of this year, and it was carried on banners in protests yesterday, after yet another ‘immigrant’ with a knife got busy in Saxony.

In the eastern German state of Saxony, a Syrian migrant has been arrested for stabbing a man in front of a supermarket, sparking large-scale protests for such a small town.

Only 16,700 people live in Heidenau, but like many locations across Germany, it is no longer immune to knife attacks and extreme violence.

…Police arrested the suspect shortly after the attack. His apparent accomplice who was armed with a baseball bat was also arrested, a 26-year-old Syrian, according to police.

”Our response is remigration, remigration by the millions!”

A Syrian migrant brutally stabbed a man outside a supermarket in Saxony, an eastern stronghold of the AfD party. The victim suffered serious injuries.

Now, 300 people demonstrated in the small German town of… pic.twitter.com/KvkMj1tS0s

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 9, 2025

It is the number one issue in Germany. Voters are tired of being ignored and their express wishes dismissed. 

…“An AfD chancellor is closer to us than we think,” he said, pointing to the growing frustration among voters who see their right-leaning choices at elections consistently ignored by a political class delivering left-wing policies.

Kubicki noted that although the vast majority of Germans have recently leaned toward conservative and right-of-center options at the ballot box — as evidenced by the most recent federal election — what they receive instead is more of the same left-leaning governance.

“The vast majority of German citizens have recently voted somehow right-wing. Now, however, they threaten to get left-wing politics,” he said.

The situation cannot continue.

Merz was bragging about his ability to vanquish the AfD not too long ago.

…Merz pitched himself as the man to slay the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) – who’d scored 12.6% in the previous year’s national election – and win back disaffected conservative voters who’d abandoned his party during Merkel’s centrist-leaning tenure. 

“You probably won’t be able to get rid of the AfD in the short term,” Merz told readers of Germany’s right-wing Bild tabloid during a Q&A session. “But you can halve it.“ 

Six years later, Merz’s boast has never rung more hollow and continues to haunt him – even as his dreams of finally winning the chancellorship appear on the verge of coming true. 

In a delicious turn of fate, the announcement of AfD’s rise to the top came only hours before Merz’s own that he had finally come to terms with the other members of his proposed coalition, and they had a government deal for their membership to vote on at last.

Conservative and center-left parties will present a deal to form a new German government on Wednesday after weeks of negotiations. The agreement paves the way for new leadership in Europe’s biggest economy after months of political drift.

Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, is expected to become Germany’s next leader under the agreement, replacing outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The parties involved sent an invitation to a news conference at 3 p.m.

…It’s still going to be a little while before parliament can elect Merz as chancellor, perhaps in early May. Before that can happen, the coalition deal will need approval in a ballot of the Social Democrats’ membership and by a convention of Merz’s CDU.

I imagine being the least popular fellow in the country will take some of the sauce off the top for Merz’s big moment, and he still has a month or so before – and if – he officially takes his seat as chancellor.

Should Merz take the chancellorship as expected, he’ll enter office with his popularity already dwindling and his largest political opponent already leading in the polls. https://t.co/LAhJOeiKaU

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 9, 2025

The bets are already being made about what AfD’s surge to the top portends for the future. 

Do those engaged in legislative attempts to ban the party redouble their efforts? It’s believed that they will, but that they will now be less successful.

What are the chances of the new German government pulling a Le Pen style-prosecution on Weidel to ‘save democracy’?

Historic whitepill. The White House and US State Dept must be ready to respond when the German government inevitably arrests AfD party leaders and threatens to cancel elections. https://t.co/FjVMAcZSuc

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) April 9, 2025

Once upon a time, there was a hard and fast answer for that sort of query:

DON’T TALK CRAZY TALK!

We’re in the ‘all bets are off’ stage of ‘democracy’ now. 

Especially with the now most popular party in the country holding 152 seats in the Bundestag and being ignored when fractious coalition partners set to catfighting amongst themselves.

You know it’s going to happen.

I’m thinking this is gonna be a mess.