Germans Are Voting Again, Amid a Far-Right Surge. Here’s What to Watch.

Germans Are Voting Again, Amid a Far-Right Surge. Here’s What to Watch. - The New York Times

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Germans Are Voting Again, Amid a Far-Right Surge. Here’s What to Watch.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/world/europe/germany-afd-elections-berlin-mecklenburg.html

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Germans Are Voting Again, Amid a Far-Right Surge. Here’s What to Watch.

Elections in eastern Germany on Sunday could galvanize the Alternative for Germany, an ascendant far-right party, or spur a backlash.

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!A row of colorful political campaign banners stands in a grassy field, backed by green trees. Text like "WIR SCHAFFEN DAS AB" is visible.

*Election campaign billboards of the far-right Alternative for Germany and other parties in the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Friday.

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John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images*

By

Jim Tankersley

Reporting from Berlin

Sept. 20, 2026, 12:01 a.m. ET

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Just two weeks after the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, scored a stunning victory in the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, German voters in two other regions are voting on Sunday and will deliver a new gauge of the AfD’s national prospects.

Voters in Berlin and in a lightly populated coastal corner of the former East Germany, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, will elect new state Parliaments on Sunday. The AfD is poised to gain significantly in both elections, even if polls suggest it will fall well short of its performance in Saxony-Anhalt, where it won 44 percent of the vote and could soon form a government.

The AfD’s leaders have used Nazi slogans and played down the significance of the Holocaust, and German intelligence has classified the party as a “suspected extremist” group. Yet it has harnessed voter anxiety over the economy and immigration, as well as the widespread unpopularity of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a mainstream conservative.

But surveys in the waning days of the campaign suggest Sunday’s vote could yet result in a backlash to the AfD’s rise. After leading in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania throughout the year, the AfD has now fallen into a virtual tie with the center-left Social Democrats.

In liberal Berlin, the AfD looks set to finish behind both Mr. Merz’s center-right Christian Democrats and the far-left party Die Linke.

Polls close at 6 p.m. in both areas. Here’s what to know.

What’s driving the AfD’s rise?

Much of what fueled the AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt is also present in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, a state of 1.5 million residents. Unemployment there is higher than the national average, as in Saxony-Anhalt. Residents still resent how eastern Germany struggled after the reunification of Germany in 1990. And many are sympathetic to Russia and wary of immigration, which surged in Germany during the European migration a decade ago.

Jim Tankersley

is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

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