<\/strong>will hope to achieve the 5% threshold needed to enter the Bundestag.<\/p>\nPolling stations known as \u201cWahllokale\u201d will open at 8 a.m. and close at 6 p.m. local (2 a.m. to noon ET) on Sunday. Shortly afterward, an exit poll will drop that has historically given an accurate idea of the final results. Over the coming hours, overnight into Monday morning, the results themselves will trickle in.<\/p>\n
Most eyes will be on the AfD. Its rise is part of a Europe-wide trend alarming liberals and centrists, whereby once-fringe nationalist parties are making striding gains across the continent at the expense of the political establishment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think it\u2019s unthinkable that fascism could return to Europe, but it has \u2014 it\u2019s here,\u201d said Marina Weisband, a prominent activist, author and psychologist. \u201cThe established parties have no answers,\u201d added Weisband, the founding director of Aula, a project to strengthen democracy education in German schools. \u201cWhat the parties in Germany mostly do is just keep the system running. But the system itself doesn\u2019t work that good anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
As with several of these nationalist European movements, the White House has established ties with the AfD, which has been endorsed by Trump adviser Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance.<\/p>\n
Andreas Busch, a professor of political science at the University of G\u00f6ttingen, believes that as striking as these interventions have been, they have not boosted the AfD\u2019s domestic polling.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has not moved the needle one bit,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have slowly but surely crept up in the opinion polls,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd that has been going on for a long time before Musk has said anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The AfD rejects labels such as far right and fascist.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AfD is not a racist or an anti-foreigner party,\u201d said Joachim Steyer, 58, a plumber turned local AfD lawmaker in the southern German town of Burladingen. \u201cBut is simply is a fact that we now have so many problems that we did not have before mass migration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost 40% of his region voted for the AfD in European elections last year despite the area having low levels of immigration. He said the vote is motivated by what people believe is happening in cities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the pictures in Hamburg, Bremen, the Ruhr valley, where they populate entire cities, where you hardly see a German, and there are mosques where there is a call to prayer in the morning, I feel more like in Turkey than in Germany,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that is what people reject. We want nothing other than being German, to preserve our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House and AfD leader Weidel did not respond to requests for comment on their relationship or policies and rhetoric of the party.<\/p>\n
The AfD\u2019s rise is particularly striking in Germany, a country so wary of its own Nazi past that it has laws and informal political pacts intended to stop fascism\u2019s return. One of these is the \u201cfirewall\u201d \u2014 an agreement by parties not to work with far-right parties such as the AfD. That\u2019s why it\u2019s unlikely the party will enter any coalition following the vote, even if it polls strongly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody expects the AfD to form a government this election,\u201d Busch said. \u201cSo it\u2019s difficult to assess how seriously they should be taken.\u201d<\/p>\n
These attempts to rein in the <\/strong>AfD has become a soapbox issue for AfD lawmakers, whose rousing cries that their freedom of speech is being restricted have been echoed by Musk and others.<\/p>\nPotential coalition options include a CDU-Green alliance. Or even a so-called \u201cGrand Coalition\u201d \u2014 or GroKo \u2014 between the CDU and SPD, the two historically largest parties right and left of center. Some see danger in this as it would anoint the AfD as the official opposition.<\/p>\n
These coalition talks can take months, and getting the wrong bedfellows can be costly. Scholz\u2019s \u201ctraffic light coalition\u201d with the Greens and Free Democrats was beset by infighting, finally imploding over a budget deficit argument in November, setting the stage for Sunday\u2019s snap poll.<\/p>\n
The idea of two rivals joining forces might seem strange to polarized American ears, but the GroKo was repeatedly employed by the imperious Merkel during her 16 years in power, and typifies the kind of moderate consensus building that drives German politics.<\/p>\n
The AfD would argue that it\u2019s exactly this kind of mainstream, establishment groupthink that got Germany and the West into the multiple crises of today.<\/p>\n
The country is undoubtedly at a low ebb. Once the industrial powerhouse of Europe, its economy sits on the brink of recession. It no longer enjoys cheap natural gas pumped into Europe by Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Western powers agreeing to stop drawing from the pariah\u2019s wellspring. And its former export market of China has become an economic competitor, challenging Germany\u2019s legacy auto industry with cheaper, great quality electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the question of the United States, which for decades has underwritten Germany\u2019s military security by positioning American troops on German soil as a warning first to the Soviet Union and now Russia. That guarantee looks over in its current form, with President Donald Trump openly questioning the postwar security pact with NATO countries.<\/p>\n
Though a back-seat military power since World War II, Germany has upped its military budget after years of failing to meet NATO\u2019s minimum guidelines. Still, many experts say that as the world\u2019s third largest economy, it is still doing too little, and raising the defense budget further will put even more strain on its ailing economy.<\/p>\n
As Germany prepares to celebrate 70 years in the military alliance in May, Merz questioned Washington\u2019s future as its keystone member.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill the Americans still be there?\u201d he told the Darmstadt event. \u201cEight weeks ago I would not have dared to ask this question, but today we have to give an answer to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
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