By Alrik Schubotz, political scientist in Berlin, 10/02/26
The recent state elections in Germany have confirmed a profound transformation of the country’s party system: the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is no longer a marginal political force and has established itself as one of the main electoral vehicles of the German far right. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in the northeast of the country, the AfD emerged from the September 20, 2026, elections as the party with the most votes, with 38.2% of the vote, ahead of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which received 35.5%. This marks a significant break with the country’s recent political history, as the SPD had been the leading party in every state election since 1998.
The AfD won 32 of the 71 seats in the state parliament, while the SPD took 29. The CDU, the party of current Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz, failed to clear the 5% threshold. The high voter turnout, at approximately 78%, also shows that the result cannot be explained simply by the mobilization of a minority that previously did not vote. The AfD’s rise must therefore be understood as the result of a combination of “perceived” material insecurities, distrust of traditional parties, and, above all, a broader and deeper political and cultural transformation.
The far right has managed to turn issues such as the cost of living, immigration, security, and war into a political narrative that portrays German society as being threatened by a “loss of control” over social dynamics. In this context, immigration is a central issue, as this discourse links it to the specter of a supposed transformation of German national identity, the family, and social norms. The defense of a heteronormative and traditional social order, opposition to LGBTQIA+ rights, and the rejection of feminism are, therefore, key elements of the broader political project to reconstruct supposed social normality. It is very important to emphasize this dimension when analyzing the AfD’s electoral successes. Its politics are not limited to the issue of migration: gender and sexuality function as key arenas for drawing boundaries between a national “us” considered legitimate and groups presented as representatives of a supposed cultural decline.
In the September 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, this dimension manifested itself very forcefully. The AfD won 43.8% of the vote, an increase of approximately 23 percentage points compared to 2021. The CDU fell from 37.1% to 17.2%, and the AfD won 39 of the 83 seats in the state parliament. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the AfD’s growth is not limited to older age groups frequently associated with the radical right. Among voters aged 18 to 24, the AfD reached 41%, and among those aged 25 to 34, 43%. These figures must undoubtedly be interpreted with caution, but they make it very difficult to sustain the idea that the German far right is simply a phenomenon associated with the older generation reacting to social changes.
The AfD has built a political platform for young people, using the language of cultural resistance. Issues such as immigration, security, and the economy are combined with aggressive criticism of feminism, so-called “gender ideology,” equality policies, and the rights of LGBTQIA+ people. This combination allows real social changes to be transformed into a narrative of loss of status and a threat to identity. Advances in the rights of women, queer people, and sexual minorities are presented not as an expansion of democracy, but as the alleged imposition of a cultural elite upon a silent majority.
The AfD’s discourse on “gender” does not merely signify the rejection of certain public policies, but is intended to promote a vision of society centered on the heterosexual family, more traditional gender roles, and the rejection of ways of life that deviate from this norm. Similarly, anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric operates in tandem with anti-immigration discourse: both issues are woven into a narrative according to which German society is simultaneously being “denationalized” and “de-traditionalized.” To this end, the far right offers a promise of restoration: to reclaim borders, authority, hierarchies, and a supposedly stable notion of collective identity.
Looking ahead to the next federal elections, it is essential not to treat state election results as an automatic prediction of the future. The next regular election for the Bundestag is scheduled for 2029, and voting behavior three years from now cannot be mechanically deduced from the 2026 results. What the current results do reveal, however, is the consolidation of a structural shift. In the 2025 federal elections, the AfD had already secured 20.8% of the vote, becoming the second-largest parliamentary force. The results in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania show that its capacity for mobilization may be even greater in parts of eastern Germany.
On the other hand, the exclusion of the AfD from coalitions formed by the major democratic parties remains a significant institutional barrier, even as its increasingly strong electoral results continually put pressure on this so-called “cordon sanitaire.” For the left, the challenge posed by the AfD is particularly difficult because its strength cannot be countered solely through moral condemnation of extremism. An effective anti-fascist policy must challenge the social and cultural conditions that make the AfD’s narratives plausible, without accepting its underlying assumptions. This means addressing wages, housing, public services, and inequality, but also directly confronting the debate over gender, sexuality, and social reproduction.
The far right portrays LGBTQIA+ rights, feminism, and equality and diversity policies as privileges of an urban elite disconnected from “ordinary people.” The progressive response must demonstrate that these rights are not a peripheral or exclusively cultural issue: they concern the distribution of power, security, bodily autonomy, and social participation. Similarly, it must argue that defending the rights of migrants is not at odds with the material concerns of the working class. On the other hand, the fragmentation of these issues benefits the radical right, whose strategy is to foment competition among groups experiencing various forms of precariousness. The political challenge for the German left, therefore, consists of building an alternative that connects economic justice, democracy, gender equality, sexual rights, and a rights-based migration policy, rather than making the far-right’s political agenda the starting point for the electoral debate.
One of the most important—and potentially most enduring—aspects of what we are witnessing is the AfD’s popularity among young people and the party’s ability to occupy the digital spaces where new generations construct their political identities. In Saxony-Anhalt, the 41% of the vote the AfD received from voters aged 18 to 24 is particularly significant. This does not, of course, justify the conclusion that the vast majority of young Germans are becoming far-right. But it also renders untenable the notion that youth is automatically synonymous with progressivism.
Part of the explanation lies in the transformation of political communication. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms do not simply function as neutral channels for conveying political positions. Their algorithms favor formats capable of capturing attention, generating emotional connection, and fostering rapid interaction. The AfD is demonstrating a considerable ability to adapt its communication strategies to this logic, using humor, provocation, memes, personalization, and cultural antagonism to present complex political positions in a highly accessible way. This is particularly important in the debate surrounding gender and sexuality. A debate on equality policies can be reduced to a few seconds of video about “gender ideology”; a discussion on trans rights can be turned into a narrative about a supposed threat to children; feminist policies can be presented as a war against men; and LGBTQIA+ rights can be associated with the idea of an elite imposing new values on society.
The effectiveness of this communication strategy does not necessarily depend on users being convinced by a coherent ideology. It operates simply by normalizing certain categories of thought, making what previously seemed extremist gradually seem familiar, funny, or acceptable. This is precisely why the left should not interpret this phenomenon in a simplistic way. Young people also use social media to produce counter-narratives, organize feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements, denounce racism, and build new forms of political solidarity. The problem is not the existence of social media itself, but the unequal contest for attention and the varying capacity to transform social frustrations into political narratives.
In this sense, the rise of the AfD among young people should be understood not only as an electoral shift, but as part of a cultural struggle over the definition of what it means to be young, German, a man, a woman, queer, a migrant, or a citizen in a society undergoing transformation. The left’s response cannot simply consist of asking young people to be “more progressive.” It must offer compelling visions of belonging, community, and the future, in which equality, sexual and gender freedom, and material security are not presented as separate projects but as dimensions of the same democratic transformation.
One area where the consequences of the AfD’s electoral gains are particularly evident is that of reproductive rights and autonomy over one’s own body. The AfD advocates not only a conservative interpretation of current legislation but also a drastic restriction on access to abortion. In its draft election platform for the federal elections, under the slogan “Willkommenskultur für Kinder” (“A Culture of Welcoming Children”), the party proposes that voluntary termination of pregnancy be effectively banned, with exceptions permitted only under exceptional circumstances. Among the proposed measures are the mandatory presentation of ultrasound images of the embryo during counseling for women facing a difficult decision and the promotion of adoption as an alternative to abortion. In July 2026, the AfD caucus in the Bundestag submitted a proposal to exclude Pro Familia—a German organization focused on family planning, sexual health, and reproductive rights—from the mandatory counseling for women seeking an abortion and to suspend public funding for this service. It is, therefore, an organization that supports the right to reproductive choice, not an anti-abortion organization, as the name might suggest in the Brazilian or Latin American context. The AfD has also categorically opposed initiatives to relax Article 218 of the German Criminal Code, which legally regulates abortion.
An important point for understanding the scope of these proposals is the so-called “counseling regulation” (Beratungsregelung). In Germany, abortion remains formally included in the Criminal Code, but it is not punishable when the pregnant person undergoes mandatory counseling at a recognized institution, observes a minimum period of three days between the counseling session and the procedure, and undergoes the abortion within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. In other words, this is a situation in which abortion remains legally considered unlawful but is no longer punishable when certain conditions are met. In 2025, approximately 96% of abortions recorded in Germany were performed under this counseling regulation, while approximately 4% were based on a medical or criminological indication. Restricting legal abortions exclusively to cases where there is a risk to the pregnant person’s life or health, or where the pregnancy results from a crime such as rape, would therefore remove the legal basis for the vast majority of abortions currently performed. From a feminist perspective, these initiatives go beyond the legal debate over the protection of life during pregnancy: they represent an attempt to subordinate reproductive autonomy to a traditional conception of family, motherhood, and gender roles.
This dimension takes on even greater significance when the AfD’s proposals are viewed within the context of a broader pro-natalist ideology. Germany is, in fact, facing a profound demographic transformation: in 2025, only 654,241 children were born—the lowest number since 1946—and the fertility rate fell to 1.32 children per woman. At the same time, the country recorded a natural deficit of about 352,000 people—that is, far more people died than were born. Low fertility and an aging population pose real challenges for social security, the labor market, and the organization of public services. It is in this context that non-ethnonationalist policies supporting reproduction and parenthood—such as Elterngeld (a benefit that compensates for part of the loss of income following the birth of a child), Elternzeit (parental leave with job protection), Kindergeld (a financial benefit provided to families per child), the expansion of Kitas (daycare centers and early childhood education institutions), tax benefits, and the Mütterrente (recognition of child-rearing periods in retirement benefit calculations), can be understood as instruments of social policy. Their goal is to reduce the economic costs of raising children and to improve the material conditions so that people can have the children they desire, without dictating who should have children. The issue changes radically when pro-birth policies are linked to a nationalist and ethno-nationalist project: in this case, reproduction is no longer understood primarily as an individual choice or a matter of social justice but is instead conceived as a tool to ensure the demographic continuity of a specific cultural or ethnic community.
German history offers particularly grim precedents for this transformation. During World War I, discourses on motherhood began to present pregnancy and reproduction as a sort of female equivalent of military service. Under Nazism, this logic was radicalized: the Mutterkreuz (German Mothers’ Cross of Honor, an award given to women considered racially “valuable” for having multiple children) rewarded “racially desirable” motherhood, while the Lebensborn (an SS program designed to promote births deemed racially desirable and, later, to Germanize children abducted from occupied territories) sought to expand the reproduction of people considered “Aryan.” At the same time, the Nazi state practiced a brutally anti-natalist policy against people deemed “undesirable,” through forced sterilizations, persecution, and murder. This contrast is fundamental: fascist natalism never simply meant “more children,” but rather more reproduction among certain groups and less reproduction among others. This historical comparison does not mean equating the AfD with Nazism, but it helps us understand why the relationship between reproduction, nationalism, and state power deserves critical attention.
In the contemporary far right, this logic reappears in different forms. The AfD advocates a nationale Bevölkerungspolitik (national population policy) and links demographic decline to the survival of the German people, pitting policies to boost the birth rate against immigration. The old slogan “Kinder statt Inder” (“children instead of Indians”), used in the 2000 German debate on the immigration of skilled workers, encapsulated this idea of partially replacing immigration with domestic reproduction. More recently, discourses on a “demographic turning point” (demografische Wende) may combine legitimate concerns about aging and labor shortages with the idea that immigration threatens Germany’s cultural continuity. It is at this point that restrictions on abortion cease to be an isolated issue and become part of a policy of reproductive governance: if every birth is conceived as a contribution to the nation’s demographic survival, the termination of a pregnancy can be reinterpreted as a loss to the collective. This view also appears in “tradwife” digital subcultures (a movement that idealizes traditional gender roles, marriage, motherhood, and large families), in which the valorization of motherhood can be combined with anti-immigration and “remigration” discourses (a political project involving the expulsion or forced return of people considered foreigners or not belonging to the national community). As Maria Antonietta Macciocchi summarized, “the plague of fascism sparked a family-centered and pro-natalist epidemic.” The contemporary question is not whether the state should support those who wish to have children, but whether demographic policy expands reproductive freedom or transforms reproduction into a national duty.