cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/25151353
BERLIN, April 9 - Germany’s far-right AfD party topped a major poll for the first time on Wednesday in a sign of growing dissatisfaction with mainstream parties as chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz seeks to seal a coalition government deal.
Support for Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc, which won the February 23 election, fell by five percentage points to 24% while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained three points to land on 25%, according to the Ipsos institute’s poll.
The AfD came second in the election, the best performance by a far-right party since World War Two.
They aren’t even maintaining the status quo. The coming German government is planning on doing a lot of what the AfD wants, notably halting practically all immigration and cutting down what’s left of social welfare. The only remaining question is, why should people vote for the watered-down copy when they can vote for the original instead? They’ve been trying to copy the rhetoric and policies for years, but it hasn’t been working (in terms of not making the AfD even bigger) and there’s no reason to believe that it’s going to start working now.
The same strategy was used in Sweden. Say they are right in their worldview, adopt very similar policies. All the rightwing parties (christians, liberals, conservatives) except one now collaborate with them and defend them.