Anti-migrant AfD seeks to break Germany’s political ‘firewall’ in historic state election

A political earthquake is brewing in Germany's east as working-class and young voters appear set to deliver an unprecedented victory for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Sunday’s state elections in Saxony-Anhalt.

The AfD, which was famously backed by Elon Musk in last year’s national election, has been criticized for being pro-Russia and was accused of being a "right-wing extremist endeavor" by Germany’s domestic intelligence office, has the chance to become the first party outside the mainstream center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) or center-right Christian Democratic Union and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), to win an outright majority in a German state parliament, or Landtag, since World War II.

"The reason Saxony-Anhalt matters," foreign policy expert and author Daniel Schatz, who holds a doctorate in political science from Berlin's Humboldt University, told Fox News Digital, "is that the AfD is no longer just knocking on the door of power.

It may be close to kicking it open." TENS OF THOUSANDS OF FAR-LEFT PROTESTERS CLASH WITH POLICE IN ANTI-CONSERVATIVE PARTY RIOTS Other minor parties have led governing coalitions in German states, but no party outside the SPD or the CDU and the CSU has ever held a single-party governing majority in Germany since the Federal Republic was re-established in 1949.

Janek Treiber, a political science researcher at Dresden University of Technology, told Fox News Digital that if the AfD does win outright in Saxony-Anhalt, their policy influence would be limited due to the German federal system, but warned "you must not underestimate the political symbol this would give.

That a single party, and a right-wing party, could rule a German state… The symbol that these parties, that have been ruling Germany since 1949 or the East since 1990, they now lose control.

They now lose power.

I think this is a much more important symbol than just saying, OK, (the) AfD will change this or that in its local school system or university system." Schatz described the AfD "a nationalist, anti-immigration party on the far right that has become a powerful vehicle for voter anger at Germany’s political establishment — especially in the former East Germany .