The hard right takes Germany into uncharted territory
Olaf Scholz’s coalition is crushed in state polls
AS THE POLLS closed in two keenly watched German state elections on September 1st, projections showed the hard right set to have notched up a first. With the details still to unfold as the full vote was counted, the story of the evening seemed clear: in Thuringia the Alternative for Germany (AfD)—a hard-right party whose branches in both that state and Saxony, which also voted on September 1st, have been formally designated as extremist—appears to have topped the polls in a state election for the first time since its founding just over a decade ago. In Saxony it is projected to sit only fractionally behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
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