Three and a half decades after reunification, a line crosses Germany where the iron curtain was formerly. Instead of barbed wire and dogs, this line now divides the Germans by measures such as income and unemployment – and increasingly by the desire to vote for extremist parties.
If East Germany was still its own country, the right -wing alternative for Germany, or AFD, which was linked to neonazis and is monitored by domestic information, would have marked a convincing victory in the elections on Sunday, with almost one in three voters who flows from the ballots.
Only two of the 48 voting districts outside Berlin in former Eastern Germany were not won by AFD. In a handful of eastern districts, AFD obtained almost 50% of the vote.
This division – and the feeling that the Germans still to a certain extent inhabit two distinct worlds, in the east and in the west – has become a persistent characteristic of the voting habits of the Germans. It is the one who manifested himself not only on Sunday but also when the Germans voted in the elections for the European Parliament last June.
The gap, according to analysts, reflects not only a failure to fully integrate the east, but also its unique problems and culture, shaped by decades of communist domination during the Cold War and a close alignment with Moscow and the old Soviet bloc.
“An important aspect of this is that many Eastern Germans have never really connected emotionally or mentally with West German democracy,” said Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist who studies east of Germany.
In addition to this, many measures where East Germany is still lagging behind the western part are the very factors that make voters more likely to vote for the extreme right, said Höhne. AFD also has close links with Moscow.
On Sunday, only 42% of the Eastern Germans voted for the traditional West Germany parties, including the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, who seem likely to form an in power coalition.
The rest voted either for AFD, Die Linke, who is himself a successor to the former Socialist Party who led the east for nearly four decades, and a small Splinter party led by a former communist.
“The ancient Western parties have never been so well established in Eastern Germany,” said Matthias Quent, a professor of sociology who has spent years studying the extreme right.
In the old Oriental, AFD is more and more visible. Many members are active in civil society – including several mayors – which means that even people who do not vote for the party are in regular contact with it, said Professor Quent.
“East Germany is just working differently and has also not become more like the rest of the country,” he said.
Since the Eastern Germans were not allowed to vote freely for four decades before 1990, it may not be surprising that they do not feel the same attachment to Western parties, according to experts.
In addition to that, the parties called the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats or the Liberal Democrats – like those of the West – existed in the old Eastern Germany, but were not real opposition parties because they were controlled by the Communist regime.
It is a story that allows AFD to claim that it is the only real alternative to traditional politics.
The result Sunday was not a surprise. The statement of votes in the East reflects the state elections in three eastern races in September.
In Thuringia, where Björn Höcke, who was sentenced to a fine by a tribunal for recycling the Nazi language, led the party, 33% voted for AFD in September. Traditional Christian democrats came in a distant second place with around 24% of the votes.
However, compared to neighboring countries, the most unusual part of the country is perhaps the West, not the east.
“According to European standards, the party landscape in eastern Germany is more the norm, while Western Germany, with its still relatively stable traditional parties, is actually the exception,” said Professor Höhne.
This is a problem not lost for traditional politicians in Berlin, who see their support to erode in the East and fear that it could be a warning sign of what will happen for all Germany.
Friedrich Merz, the future alleged chancellor of a central-law government, recognized the severity of the imbalance of German voting habits when he spoke to journalists one day after winning the national vote.
“We are extremely concerned about what’s going on to the east,” said Mr. Merz.
To strengthen the fortune of the traditional parties, Mr. Merz plans to solve the problems both with irregular migration, which was the favorite question of AFD, and with the economy, because Germany has trouble improving competitiveness.
“We have to work together to solve the problems in Germany to gradually deprive this part of its fertile land,” he said about AFD.
Mr. Merz would be the first Christian Democratic Chancellor since Angela Merkel, who was the first and so far, only the Chancellor raised in East Germany.
And while the two parts of the country have become more integrated, high -level policy has not done so. Of the 17 ministers of the Government of the Cabinet who came out of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, two were born in Eastern Germany – and there could be even less with Mr. Merz.
