According to the preliminary results of the German elections that were held on Sunday, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party won in Hesse, having secured 34.6 percent of votes whereas SDP got only 15.1 percent.
In Bavaria, SDP received only 8.4 percent of the votes, compared to the center-right Christian Social Union (CSU) who triumphed in that election with 37 percent of the votes.
One German magazine described these results as the worst for the SDP since 2018.
SDP’s results look especially mediocre in the face of gains made in both elections by the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which gained 18.4 percent of the votes in Hesse and 14.6 percent in Bavaria.
Gunnar Beck, a German politician and Member of the European Parliament for AfD, told Sputnik that three factors helped his party make gains during the aforementioned elections.
First, Beck said, there is the “dire economic situation” in the country, with inflation running rampant and food and energy prices growing.
The second factor, according to the MEP, is “the ongoing very high levels of migration,” which has been on the rise since 2015 when then-Chancellor Angela Merkel “opened the borders.”
“Of late, under the current government, we've seen a rising immigration once again,” Beck explained.
The third factor, according to Beck, is the “rising crime levels due to this sharp increase of migration, in particular from Africa and the Middle East.”
“I think it's important to point out that pretty much all the immigrants we receive in Germany are unqualified. They don't work. Consequently, I mean, they live more comfortably than in their own countries,” Beck said. “But naturally, the combination of leisure and lack of work and no income from labor means that there's the potential for rising crime, and we've seen that over recent years.”
Beck described the results of the elections as a win for AfD, noting that the party “registered the largest increase in its share of the popular vote compared to the elections five years ago.”
He observed that, while CDU “remains the largest party and it's still able to form a government, at least at the regional level, with at least with one other party,” we may be witnessing a situation where “it will become increasingly difficult for even the CDU to govern with just one other coalition partner.”
The MEP also argued that regional elections in Germany are “a very good barometer of changing political trends."
“So from the AfD point of view, I think these two elections, regional elections, confirm what the polls have been indicating for quite a while, namely that we are becoming a major political force and the second largest party in Germany as a whole now,” he elaborated.
Regarding the expectations for the upcoming 2024 European Parliament election in Germany, Beck said he expects Afd to make “considerable gains.”
“The general expectation is that the conservative parties on the right are going to register considerable gains. And I think I share that prediction,” he said. “But of course, if we are honest, we have to realize that in order to keep the conservative right out of government and out of decision making, most of the other parties are willing to enter into whatever coalition government or majority arrangements are necessary to marginalize us.”