Almost a third of Germans back AfD as far right hits new highs

Merz took power on May 6, 2025, leading a compromise coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). At the time, he argued that effective governance could weaken the AfD, which finished second in the general election – the far right’s best result since World War II.

But the past year has been difficult for Merz’s coalition. Infighting within the government and a slowing economy helped fuel the rise of the AfD. It is now at around 28% in the polls, matching the result of Merz’s bloc in last year’s elections and marking the highest level of support in the AfD’s history.

Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist at Chemnitz University of Technology, said the AfD – a party defined by its opposition to immigration, sympathy for Russia and support for Donald Trump, whose members have also been associated with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks – is now firmly established and can no longer be seen as a protest vote.

He added that by contrast, the electoral base of Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance and the SPD is “disappearing”, with the conservatives falling below 25% in polls and the social democrats below 15%.

The trend is particularly pronounced in East Germany, where the AfD is aiming to win two regional elections in September, which could deal a historic blow to the two main parties that have dominated power since 1949. The party has also made strong gains in West Germany, approaching 20% ​​in elections in two states this year.

AfD officials say the results show the conservative chancellor is committing political suicide by associating himself with the center-left instead of working with them, a party they say shares more in common with his own. Merz and his party reject this assertion, maintaining the “firewall” – a broad consensus that no party should form an alliance with groups considered undemocratic or racist.

Thanks to her coalition with the SPD, Merz will not win back a single voter from the AfD and will instead continue to lose support for the far-right party because ineffective governments are punished at the ballot box, Bernd Baumann, head of the AfD parliamentary group, told Agence France-Presse, referring to the disputes that have paralyzed the coalition and hampered decision-making.

A year into his term, Merz’s gamble that he could neutralize the AfD by tightening immigration policy and pushing forward liberal economic reforms has, so far, failed. Although the change in migration policy led to a significant drop in arrivals, the Chancellor did not reap any political gains.

Research shows that prioritizing immigration on the political agenda, aligning positions more closely with those of populist parties and adopting their rhetoric tends to strengthen right-wing populists, said Marc Debus, a political scientist at the University of Mannheim.

A bigger problem, however, is the government’s inability to agree on the reforms needed to revive an economy in crisis since 2022, in part because of energy prices, a lack of innovation, U.S. tariffs and Chinese competition. Internal conflicts have led to coalition parties and the executive branch being seen as less capable of solving major problems, Debus said.

Even as conservatives and social democrats continue to promise compromise, their frequent clashes – over the economy, taxes and the welfare state – have become commonplace. According to an Insa poll published this week in Bild, only 16% of Germans are satisfied with the government, and only 24% think it will last until the end of its term in 2029. Debus said such discontent significantly improves the prospects of right-wing populist parties in the next elections, which could take place sooner than expected.