Germany Immune to Populist Right No More as AfD Party Rises: Q&A

Viscerally opposed to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy toward refugees, the Alternative for Germany party is poised to widen its support in three state elections on Sunday, further disrupting the nation’s political map. AfD, as the party is known in German, already holds seats in five of the country’s 16 state legislatures, though it isn’t in power in any of them.

AfD began in 2013 out of opposition to the euro and taxpayer-funded bailouts of countries such as Greece. Co-founder Bernd Lucke, an economics professor who focused the party on the euro, quit last year after losing a power struggle with rivals including current co-leader Frauke Petry, 40, an East German-born chemist. The AfD failed to reach the 5 percent threshold to win seats in the German parliament in 2013, though it entered the European Parliament the following year. Several senior party members are defectors from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union who view her as pulling the party to the political left. Polls suggest the AfD will win seats in all three contests on Sunday, including the western states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Established parties are vowing to band together to keep the AfD out of government.