Radical right on the rise: can the Union stop the AfD?

There were two headlines that seemed to be related: The AfD – according to surveys, now at 17 percent. And the Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) is in favor of fundamentally changing the right to asylum. Is that how you get the AfD down?

Not only in the Union do they observe with concern the increasing support for the right-wing extremist party. Even if surveys do not say anything about how many of the respondents actually tick the AfD in the voting booth, the values ​​reflect a development. If you talk to politicians who travel a lot in the country, they say: the mood is bad.

Experts explain the AfD’s poll high with various factors. What the party itself does is only partially decisive. The AfD is playing into the cards the development since the beginning of the war in Ukraine: inflation, energy prices, economic uncertainty. Barely noticed, the party’s polls rose last year.

In addition, there is currently migration, which is still overtaxing many municipalities. This is a key mobilization issue for the AfD, says extremism researcher Steffen Kailitz. “In this respect, the party is once again benefiting from the increasing number of immigrants.”

In addition, the heating law is causing uncertainty among the population. The reason, writes the political consultant and AfD expert Johannes Hillje, is that the burden of the law became known in a very concrete and overwhelming way, but the relief is still unclear today. The opposition is fueling the discourse with key terms from the AfD. The fact that all of this falls on fertile ground is because part of the population is already right-wing populist.

Who or what can stop the party? CDU leader Friedrich Merz has not explicitly repeated his announcement that he wants to halve the AfD in recent years. Since then, top politicians in his party have been pursuing different strategies to defeat the AfD.

Success model: listening

Michael Kretschmer, the Prime Minister of Saxony, probably has the most difficult task. If the AfD became the strongest force in the state elections and “could claim the post of prime minister, at least pro forma, that would have extreme symbolic power,” says researcher Kailitz.

Kretschmer has been trying for years: listening. At his events entitled “Michael Kretschmer direct”, citizens can pester him with questions and voice their criticism. Kretschmer then also counters this, but never in a lecturing manner. The strategy is considered a success model.

But Kretschmer keeps coming up with demands that alienate party members, for example on the subject of Ukraine, or that are at least controversial. This is his latest attempt to change the asylum law. Kretschmer proposes a commission for new migration rules, if necessary the constitution must be changed. Kretschmer apparently has something similar in mind as the 1993 asylum compromise.

Kailitz says that a party like the CDU is at liberty to change its position on the subject of migration, for example – especially since the municipalities are actually at the limit and the numbers could rise again in the summer. “But it would be wrong to change content-related positions only to bring back AfD voters.”

Not only task of the CDU

It is just as wrong to approach the party rhetorically with verbal gaffes, as the Thuringian CDU leader Mario Voigt recently did. “You don’t fight the party that way, you legitimize it,” says Kailitz.

In connection with the traffic light heat planning law, Voigt had spoken of an “energy Stasi” and thus indirectly compared the federal government with a GDR regime. The “GDR 2.0” accusation always came from the AfD.

Within the Union, it is also controversial how strongly one should fuel a culture war, for example when it comes to the sensitive issue of gender. Does it increase polarization or mobilize voters? CSU boss Markus Söder railed against the “Woke madness”. NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst, for example, can do little with it.

They agree in the Union that what matters in the end is solving people’s real problems. Right-wing extremism researcher Kailitz also says it is wrong to believe that it is only the task of the CDU or FDP to keep voters in the democratic spectrum. “This is a task for all parties.”