Populist / nationalist AfD surges in German state election polls | Eastern North Carolina Now

Germany's populist / nationalist anti-immigration Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) is surging in polls for upcoming state elections as the country's left wing government proposes giving citizenship to 2 million illegal aliens.  Germany holds each state election at a different time, and states scheduled to vote in 2023 are in the western part of the country, while those in 2024 are in states in the east.

In states that will be voting in 2023, polls are showing that the AfD is going to double its vote share from the last election.  That in spite of the party facing significant hurdles in two of the three.  One, Hamburg, has always been heavily left-leaning.  Another, conservative Bavaria already has two strong local traditional conservative parties who are very vocal against illegal immigration, the Christian Social Union and the Free Voters, which AfD has to compete against.

States voting in 2024 do not present those hurdles, and polls show the AfD as the most popular party in both Brandenburg and Thuringia.  In Saxony, which in Wilhelmine and Weimar times was nicknamed "Red Saxony" for its propensity to vote for parties of the left, polls now show that the AfD and CDU will together win 2/3rds of the vote.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/weidel-absolutely-realistic-for-afd-to-rule-in-east-germany/

Another key indicator in the polls is that the Free Democrats, the small center-right party that keeps the leftwing national govetnment in power is likely to lose all of its seats in all of the states voting in both 2023 and 2024.  It already lost all of its seats in the most important state that voted in 2022, Lower Saxony and lost over half of its seats in the other large state that voted in 2022, North Rhein - Westphalia.  Its former voters are not happy with it keeping the leftwing Social Democrats and far left Greens in power.