In the introduction to my book, I make the argument that the AfD’s emergence onto the political stage in 2013 is not entirely unprecedented; the German far right has in fact existed in one form or another since the end of WW2. However, the right-wing extremist political parties, e.g., the NPD (now Die Heimat) or Die Republikaner, rarely met the 5% vote threshold required by Germany’s system of proportional representation to make an electoral impact. Germany is also no stranger to right-wing extremism in the post-WW2 era, most aptly demonstrated by the case of Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU), to give but one prominent example. The AfD’s electoral successes at both a state and federal level to date speaks to the broader global mainstreaming of the far right but certainly does not exist in a vacuum, despite breaking an existential cordon sanitaire when it comes to open support for the far right in the German context.
The numbers are nonetheless compelling; regional and federal elections have shown us that the AfD’s star is not on the wane despite its many and varied controversies and a revolving cast of party leaders which began with Bernd Lucke in 2013 and stands currently with Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla. Regional elections in Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg in 2024 saw the AfD top the polls in Thuringia, trouncing the CDU, and coming second in Brandenburg and Saxony. Furthermore, the AfD also won 16% of the European Parliament vote of that same year, coming second to the CDU, despite allegations that AfD MEP Maximilian Krah was a double agent for the Chinese government. The 2025 federal election saw the AfD come second after Friedrich Merz’s CDU with 20.8% of the vote and 152 seats in the Bundestag. These electoral successes come despite the so-called Brandmauer, or ‘firewall against the far right.’ In theory, this means that the AfD will not be able to form coalitions with the other parties in the event that it does not secure an outright majority.
State elections in Saxony-Anhalt on 6th September of this year saw the regional AfD fraktion led by Ulrich Siegmund win 43.8% of the votes. This is a significant development given that the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt are officially designated as right-wing extremist by the domestic German intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. This follows the example of the AfD fraktion in Thuringia led by Björn Höcke, who, amongst other controversies, stood trial in 2024 for using a banned Nazi slogan during a campaign meeting. Despite this victory in Saxony-Anhalt, however, the AfD has not won an outright majority; commentators suggest that the left-leaning and pro-Russia Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW auf Deutsch) may fill that gap. In subsequent weeks, the AfD has ousted the CDU from the state parliament in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with Die Linke finishing first in Berlin, also ahead of Merz’s increasingly beleaguered CDU.
We rely on statistics to tell us some innate ‘truths’ about the world as we perceive it; it is clear, for example, that there is an appetite for what the AfD has to offer its potential constituents, with it overrepresented in the eastern German states but finding a foothold in each of Germany’s 16 federal states since 2017. However, with each subsequent election cycle we continue to be shocked at these continued successes, and crucially, the different groups of people who appear to support them. Figures show us, for example, that when it comes to the 2017, 2021, and 2025 federal elections, 9.2%, 7.8%, and 18% of women, respectively, voted for the AfD nationally. Those are not insignificant numbers. However, despite seemingly challenging our assumptions about gender and far-right support, they tell us very little about the person behind the vote at the ballot box and the micropolitics of their everyday lives which make this support possible in the first place.
We get stuck in an infinite feedback loop of wondering where it all went wrong; what we miss from debates and commentary following these elections in Germany is a level of nuance which invites us to (attempt) to move past our own biases and confront the awkward reality that women find the AfD and its ideas appealing, empowering, and rational. Unpacking this support, however, is not an easy task. My book shows, for example, that women’s AfD support is often complex yet contradictory; they engage with cornerstone party issues (same-sex marriage, family politics, etc.) on competing fronts, e.g., the personal and the professional. On the one hand, they campaign against same-sex marriage on behalf of the party, yet on the other, privately agree that same-sex couples should have the same legal rights as their heteronormative peers. This epistemological ‘messiness’ can be hard to reconcile from a researcher’s perspective but is ultimately part and parcel of how routine politics takes place today and requires further examination.
I’m currently reading Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk’s 2024 edition of Freiheitsschock: Eine andere Geschichte Ostdeutschlands von 1989 bis heute, and he makes the point that figures and surveys are sometimes not enough to explain a certain trend or behaviour; in Freiheitsschock he refers to state-centric analyses of the consequences of German reunification which did not move beyond its immediate economic implications (p. 15). He notices a similar response to contemporary debates surrounding social divisions in Germany and the radicalisation of different segments of the population; numbers only tell us so much when it comes to how this particular situation (i.e., the success of the AfD) came to evolve into its current state (p. 15). Given that AfD support is overrepresented in the eastern German states, questions of how and why become quickly replaced with where and when this support has developed and evolved over time, place, and space. It is with this same critical lens that we need to examine the tricky epistemological terrain of gender and far-right support in Germany and the continuing appeal of the AfD across demographics.
These are just a few thoughts. Get in touch if you’d like to discuss further or comment below.
