Five state elections will be held in Germany in 2026. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) enters this “super election year” in a strong position: it is the largest opposition party in the federal government, it continues to poll close to 25 percent nationally, and it has the potential to earn the most votes in the two eastern state elections in September. Dr. Wolfgang Muno joins this episode of The Zeitgeist to discuss what is contributing to the AfD’s popularity, if recent nepotism scandals could dissuade voters from the party, and how a potential AfD-led state government could impact Germany’s democracy.

Host
Jeff Rathke, President, AGI
Guests
Eric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Wolfgang Muno, Chair of Comparative Politics, University of Rostock

Transcript
Jeff Rathke
It’s a great day to have our listeners back with us for a new episode of The Zeitgeist. We are speaking on March 10, 2026, and I’m glad to have my colleague Eric Langenbacher with me. Eric, good morning.
Eric Langenbacher
Good morning on this beautiful spring day.
Jeff Rathke
Yes, and we have with us a special guest from Germany, Dr. Wolfgang Muno. Wolfgang, good afternoon to you where you are.
Wolfgang Muno
Thank you for having me. It’s nice to be with you.
Jeff Rathke
Wolfgang Muno is the chair of comparative politics at the University of Rostock. He has been in the past a visiting fellow here at the Institute. And what we want to talk about today is the far-right AfD party in Germany, the electoral landscape that is emerging, and what this may tell us about what to expect in the months to come, 2026 being a big election year in Germany at the state level. As people who follow German politics may remember, every year, you have a few state elections. This year there are five. These form a sort of barometer of sentiment that gives you a little bit more insight than public opinion polling, perhaps. What we want to do is talk a little bit about a state election that happened on Sunday, March 8. That was in the south-west state of Baden-Württemberg, a west German state, and extract a few lessons from that and look ahead and see what this tells us about German politics. Of course, Wolfgang, at the University of Rostock in the sort of heartland of support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, the AfD. They have been riding high in opinion polls since last year’s election. They did better than ever before in the Bundestag election in 2025; they got just over 20 percent. Now they are at 25 percent in most national polls. What do you think accounts for this increase in their support?
Wolfgang Muno
First of all, I would like to say that the rise of right-wing extremist, far-right, or right-wing populist parties is, of course, not a German phenomenon. It happens all over the world at the moment. We see the Rassemblement National in France, the Justice Party in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary, Vox and Schega in Spain and Portugal. We see the rise of MAGA in the United States. We have seen Bolsonarismo in Brazil, we see Modi in India. There are some similarities, but there are also some regional specifications.
In Germany, for a very long time, we have seen some right parties rising but then going down. In the 60s, the NPD (National Democratic Party) was in the state parliaments in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. In the 80s and 90s, we had the Republikaner, which was a far-right republican party. We’ve seen in the 2000s the NPD again in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in Saxony, DVU (German People’s Union) in Bremen and Saxony-Anhalt.