German Politicians Call For Ban on AfD as Party Surges in Polls

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With Alternative for Germany (AfD) surging in polls ahead of next month’s regional elections, establishment parties are calling for a ban on the right-wing party. “High-ranking German politicians have advocated for proceedings to ban the most radical regional branches of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party,” German public broadcaster DW News reported Sunday.

For years, the German left has called for a ban on the AfD, but these demands are now reaching a fever pitch as Berlin’s political class dreads a looming right-wing victory. “The AfD is leading the polls in two states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, that will vote next month,” The New York Times reported on Sunday.

If AfD wins democratically, the established parties are reportedly working behind the scenes to sabotage its ability to govern. According to the NYT, “Government leaders across Germany are publicly and privately exploring ways to curb the power of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, if it wins control of a state government in elections on Sept. 6.”

DW News continued:

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Baden-Württemberg’s state premier, Cem Özdemir, called for bans to be initiated swiftly in a joint guest op-ed in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

“We once again strongly urge that proceedings to ban the party be initiated as soon as possible, with a particular focus on the AfD’s clearly ethno-nationalist state branches in Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg,” Pistorius and Özdemir said.

Their comments come just days before the September 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, where an AfD victory could result in a far-right party leading a German state government for the first time since the end of Nazi rule in 1945.

Pistorius and Özdemir argue that it is important to distinguish between different factions within the AfD.

The two politicians say that the party’s more radical, ethnically based wing rejects the constitutional principle. In their view, this wing should be subject to legal scrutiny.

They refer to this faction of the AfD as “völkisch” — a German adjective derived from das Volk, meaning “the people.” The völkisch movement was an ethno-nationalist movement and precursor to Nazism. Today, the AfD is often accused of holding völkisch views because its officials repeatedly distinguish between Germans with and without a history of migration.

The AfD, which won 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 21% of the total vote in the 2025 election, is presently leading in nationwide polls with 29%, 9 points ahead of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU, CSU).

The same poll, released on Saturday, shows that 22% of respondents threaten to leave Germany if the right-wing party were to come to power in Berlin. The AfD, on its part, wants to deport “millions” of illegals if it wins the general election.

The AfD owes its popularity to its reasonable immigration policy. Since Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s border to mass immigration in 2015, terror attacks and violent crime have risen rapidly. Recent crime figures show an average of 80 knife attacks per day in Germany.

In May 2025, the German domestic intelligence agency, the Verfassungsschutz, designated the AfD as ‘extremist,’ paving the way for a possible ban. So far, the German government, comprising conservatives and social democrats, has shied away from initiating the proceedings to ban the party. Banning the biggest opposition party, which is rapidly approaching a third of the popular vote, would plunge the country into its deepest political crisis since the collapse of Communist East Germany 37 years ago.

[Disclaimer: The author is a former member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)]

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