The state election in Rhineland-Palatinate was a success for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party: With 19.5 percent of the vote, the AfD more than doubled their result from the previous state election five years ago.
That number was even slightly higher than the percentage the AfD got in the Baden-Württemberg election two weeks ago.
Among working-class and low-income voters, the AfD has become the most popular party: Thirty-nine percent of this group voted for the party, which has seen several of its regional chapters labelled far-right extremist by domestic intelligence agencies.
A trend is taking hold across Germany: In its strongholds in the east of the country, the former communist East Germany, the party now receives nearly half of all blue-collar workers' support. They are becoming a key factor in the rise of this controversial party.
At a time of economic stagnation and the loss of tens of thousands of industrial jobs, political analysts put the AfD's success down to one main reason: fear of job loss and social decline. "The AfD supports and fuels the concerns that exist among the working class," communications researcher Frank Brettschneider from the University of Hohenheim told German public broadcaster Südwestrundfunk, or SWR.
The multiple crises caused by wars, climate change and artificial intelligence are becoming a stress test for democratic society — and not just in Germany.
Germany's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are one of the world's oldest workers' parties. However with only brief interruptions, the SPD has been in decline at the ballot box for years.
An election analysis by the polling institute Infratest dimap on the recent state election in Rhineland-Palatinate paints a bleak picture for the Social Democrats, finding that 71 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: "The SPD no longer clearly stands on the side of workers."
The AfD is working to fill this void. The party successfully plays on stereotypes, such as the idea that officials from other parties are out of touch with the real world and its problems, Brettschneider said. He notes that AfD campaigners say things like "those in power have no idea what your life is really like. But we do." This narrative resonates with voters, he explains.
Working-class voters do not credit the AfD with any particular expertise in economic policy, social justice or job creation though. But they rank asylum and refugee policy and the fight against crime as more important than economic expertise. These are the dominant themes in the AfD's election campaigns, where it links issues such as prosperity and affordable rent to migration. It portrays immigrants as a threat to German standards of living, appealing to voters' fears of social decline.