The year 2024 could shake up the political landscape in Germany. The focus: state elections in three eastern German states. The AfD is hoping for electoral success, the traffic light is facing difficult times and the Union is facing a decision.
“Next year is the year of the AfD,” said publicist Michel Friedman recently at the Frankfurt Römerberg Talks. He is concerned about the end of the 2020s – Friedman fears that the first ideas about coalitions with the right-wing party might then become socially acceptable at the federal level. He sees the coming year as part of a possible development there.
The poll numbers for the AfD, which have been high for months, seem like foreshocks. The repeat of the federal election on February 11th in some Berlin electoral districts is likely to only bring about minor shifts and not a change in the balance of power. A stronger signal will probably come from the European elections and various local elections in June. The big bang could come in September if the AfD emerges as the winner of one or even several state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg for the first time since its founding. The 2024 election year will therefore be dominated by the question of whether the AfD’s rise will continue – or whether the other parties can stop it.
A lot can still happen between now and the elections in the East, the overall political situation can change quickly – and new competition from the left could also lure away voters from the AfD. As always, everything is connected to everything else. Six events in particular are likely to result in a particularly turbulent year in terms of domestic politics:
January: Foundation of the Wagenknecht Party
At the beginning of the year, former left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht wants to shake up German politics by founding a new party. The 54-year-old also wants to poach voters from the AfD with sharp opposition to the traffic light’s economic, climate and transformation policies and with restrictive migration policy. Those who are thinking about voting for the AfD out of anger should get a reputable address, says Wagenknecht. It’s about filling a political void in the country.
Political scientists believe that a Wagenknecht party has great potential, especially in the East. Will it stop the AfD from soaring? Party leader Tino Chrupalla told ZDF that he had “no beads of fear on his forehead.” In January, Wagenknecht and supporters want to meet in Berlin for the founding party conference.
February: Decision on secret service observation of the AfD
In February there will be an important legal question in Münster that could also have an impact on the popularity of the AfD: The Higher Administrative Court must clarify whether the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution can classify the party as a suspected right-wing extremist case nationwide and observe it using secret services to determine whether it is There are actually efforts to undermine the country’s free-democratic basic order. In the lower court, the domestic secret service was right. The Cologne Administrative Court found that there was sufficient factual evidence of anti-constitutional efforts by the party.
The AfD had lodged an appeal. Regardless of what the decision turns out to be, the party will try to mobilize supporters with it: if it is successful, it will pose as a winner against what it sees as an instrumentalized protection of the constitution, and if it loses, it will act as a supposed victim of state harassment. What is clear, however, is that the days in which the AfD had to fear that being officially identified as right-wing extremist would harm it are over.
June: European and local elections
June 9th, the day of the European elections in Germany, will show what the mood is in the country. If voter approval for the traffic light continues to decline, the ongoing smoldering fire over the course and priorities of this government threatens to flare up again, especially between the FDP and the Greens. With dwindling voter support, the FDP is already feeling more and more uncomfortable in this alliance, but it is difficult for it to collapse because, according to surveys, it could be thrown out of the Bundestag in a new election.
June 9th will also be the first test run for Wagenknecht’s new party. Can she immediately win over enough voters to sustain the project, or is it running out of steam just a few months after it was founded? She hopes for a double-digit result.
But it’s not just the European elections that will be a pointer. On the same day and in some cases even before, district councils, municipal councils and mayors will be elected in eight federal states, including all five eastern German states. Local politicians are not responsible for migration, inflation, climate and energy, but the federal issues could have an impact – and the AfD is trying to secure additional offices in the municipalities, as has happened in isolated cases recently.
September: state elections
On September 1st, Germany – rested after a summer break and beach vacation – could finally land pretty hard on the political reality. New state parliaments will be elected in Saxony and Thuringia, and on September 22nd it will be Brandenburg’s turn. In surveys, the AfD was recently clearly ahead in all three countries, in some cases well over 30 percent. It would be the first time that the AfD won a state election. Although surveys are only snapshots and not predictions of the election outcome, the party is already publicly talking about absolute majorities and a Prime Minister Höcke in Thuringia.
Given the current values, this seems unlikely because when forming a government, it is not a matter of which party has the largest parliamentary group, but rather who can achieve a majority.
According to experts, however, it cannot be completely ruled out that the AfD will come to power. If it increases even further and the traffic light parties SPD, Greens and FDP fail at the five percent hurdle, things could get tight. This possibility was suggested, at least for Saxony, in an Insa survey in the summer. The two remaining parties, the CDU and the Left, would then have to get more votes together in order to prevent the election of an AfD prime minister in the state parliament. What has not yet been priced in is what effect the planned Wagenknecht party would have.
However, it is also clear that forming a government with a strong AfD in the state parliament could be difficult or impossible – as has already been the case in Thuringia, where the left-wing Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, who is effectively tolerated by the CDU, remains in office even though his coalition does not have a majority. Some people are already racking their brains about such scenarios – and about previously unknown collaborations between the CDU and the Left: “If it is actually about the situation that is still purely fictitious today, that there are only three factions in Saxony’s state parliament: the CDU, the AfD and the Left “I think that it is important to convey to many members of my party that the AfD must not have any say in this,” said Saxony’s left-wing faction leader Rico Gebhardt to the “Sächsische Zeitung” in October.
It would be one thing to jointly prevent an AfD prime minister, but what then? Who should govern and with whom if there are no longer any majorities? The CDU has ruled out government cooperation with the Left as well as with the AfD.
The state elections in the east also have the potential to send shockwaves abroad. The international response is likely to be great if, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, a radical right-wing party becomes the strongest force in Europe’s largest economy. If the AfD wins the state elections at the expense of the traffic light parties, the question will arise again in Berlin as to whether this coalition is still viable. However, the will to persevere is likely to grow as the 2025 federal election gets closer. Especially since early elections shortly before the regular date hardly make sense.
Late summer/autumn: The Union’s candidacy for chancellor
The most important decision of the year will also be made by the Union around the state elections in late summer 2024. The CDU and CSU then want to answer the question of the candidacy for chancellor and thus who will be Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s challenger in the next federal election. The exact date has not yet been set. CSU boss Markus Söder would like to wait for the polls in the east. However, that would link the question of whether Friedrich Merz will become CDU leader to these election results: If Merz manages to keep his party at a stable level or even make gains, he is almost certain to win the K question .
If the CDU loses noticeably in the East, the hour could come for its competitors: Söder or the Prime Ministers of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein, Hendrik Wüst and Daniel Günther, who stand for the milder middle course. The internal debate about whether this or the flashy Merz course appeals better to voters and prevents votes for the AfD has not yet been decided.
November: Trump re-elected?
The US presidential election on November 5, 2024 will be one of the most important events of the year, not only in terms of foreign policy. If the Republican Donald Trump were to be elected president again, that would also have an impact on German domestic politics and probably also on how the AfD is dealt with. The right would claim tailwind for themselves and their argument that everywhere in the West the countermovement to what they call the “left-green mainstream” is gaining the upper hand.
It is also suspected that US support for Ukraine could be scaled back under Trump, which would play into the hands of the Russian ruler. It is questionable whether the Europeans can and want to provide enough support for Ukraine in the long term without the USA to counter Putin’s expansionist efforts. That would also be in the interest of the AfD, which has advocated staying out of it from the start and continuing to buy cheap oil and gas from Russia.
At his summer press conference in July, Chancellor Scholz was also asked about the strength of the AfD. His answer at the time: “I am very confident that the AfD will not perform much differently in the next federal election than in the last one.” That was in autumn 2021. At that time it was 10.3 percent. Your nationwide poll numbers are currently twice as high.