The state election in Rhineland-Palatinate was a success for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party: With 19.5% of the vote, the AfD more than doubled their result from the previous state election five years ago.

That number was even slightly higher than the percentage the AfD got in the Baden-Württemberg election two weeks ago.

Among working-class and low-income voters, the AfD has become the most popular party: Thirty-nine percent of this group voted for the party, which has seen several of its regional chapters labelled far-right extremist by domestic intelligence agencies.

A trend is taking hold across Germany: In its strongholds in the east of the country, the former communist East Germany, the party now receives nearly half of all blue-collar workers' support. They are becoming a key factor in the rise of this controversial party.

At a time of economic stagnation and the loss of tens of thousands of industrial jobs, political analysts put the AfD's success down to one main reason: fear of job loss and social decline. "The AfD supports and fuels the concerns that exist among the working class," communications researcher Frank Brettschneider from the University of Hohenheim told German public broadcaster Südwestrundfunk, or SWR.

The multiple crises caused by wars, climate change and artificial intelligence are becoming a stress test for democratic society — and not just in Germany.

Taking voters from the Social Democrats

Germany's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are one of the world's oldest workers' parties. However with only brief interruptions, the SPD has been in decline at the ballot box for years.

An election analysis by the polling institute Infratest dimap on the recent state election in Rhineland-Palatinate paints a bleak picture for the Social Democrats, finding that 71% of respondents agreed with the statement: "The SPD no longer clearly stands on the side of workers."

The AfD is working to fill this void. The party successfully plays on stereotypes, such as the idea that officials from other parties are out of touch with the real world and its problems, Brettschneider said. He notes that AfD campaigners say things like "those in power have no idea what your life is really like. But we do." This narrative resonates with voters, he explains.

Working-class voters do not credit the AfD with any particular expertise in economic policy, social justice or job creation though. But they rank asylum and refugee policy and the fight against crime as more important than economic expertise. These are the dominant themes in the AfD's election campaigns, where it links issues such as prosperity and affordable rent to migration. It portrays immigrants as a threat to German standards of living, appealing to voters' fears of social decline.

This is the opposite of what leading economists say. They view immigration as key to sustaining German prosperity. In a 2025 analysis, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) concluded that increased migration holds enormous potential for robust growth of the German economy.

In his analysis in 2023, DIW president Marcel Fratzscher concluded that the main victims of AfD policies would be its own voters.

The party stands for an "extremely neoliberal economic and fiscal policy," according to Fratzscher. It primarily plans tax breaks for top earners and seeks to curtail the role of the state. "No party in the Bundestag wants deeper cuts to social benefits than the AfD," Fratzscher noted.

Rubbing shoulders with trade unions

The AfD is also seeking to forge ties with unions, by supporting an association called Zentrum. This presents itself as an "alternative" labor movement and is generally considered a far-right organization. It competes for the allegiance of German workers in other large and long-established trade unions like IG Metall and has been trying for years to gain a foothold on the works councils of major German automotive companies.

Works councils play a significant role in Germany; they represent the interests of employees and carry considerable weight in public debates. 

Even if the AfD's electoral successes might suggest otherwise, these efforts have so far met with only moderate success. While Zentrum has managed to gain seats on works councils at individual Mercedes or VW plants, it has yet to achieve any notable successes in ongoing works council elections across Germany. IG Metall remains the big winner.

In the competition for workers' votes, retired sociology professor Klaus Dörr calls on the political left in particular to reconnect more strongly with the reality of the working class. "I believe that the proportion of workers who can be won back is not that small," Dörr told the Berlin-based newspaper, Tageszeitung.

Fewer and fewer workers in Germany identify with their companies, even in long-established major corporations like VW and Mercedes, Dörr observed. "But what people everywhere do identify with is their homeland," he continued, arguing that left-wing parties should reclaim the concept of "homeland" from the AfD.

This article was originally written in German.

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