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BERLIN, 9 Oct: A leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany said on Monday that her party is no longer a primarily eastern German phenomenon after a pair of strong state election perform-ances in the country\u2019s more prosperous west, declaring that \u201cwe have arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 10-year-old Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is at its strongest in the country\u2019s former communist east. It hopes to emerge as the strongest party for the first time in three state elections in that region about a year from now.<\/p>\n
However, co-leader Alice Weidel said gains for the party on Sunday in the western states of Hesse and Bavaria show that \u201cAfD is no longer an eastern phenomenon, but has become a major all-German party. So we have arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s elections, halfway through the term of Chancellor Olaf Scholz\u2019s unpopular three-party government, followed a campaign marked by discontent with persistent squabbling in the national government and by pressure to reduce the number of migrants arriving in Germany.<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s main opposi-tion force, the mainstream conservative Union bloc, won the two elections in states it already led. But AfD was one of the day\u2019s biggest winners, taking 18.4% of the vote to finish second in Hesse \u2014 the first time it has done so in a state vote in the west. It was also the party\u2019s best result so far in a western state election, beating its previous record of 15.1% in southwestern Baden-Wuerttemberg in 2016.<\/p>\n
In Bavaria, it also made gains to finish third with 14.6%.<\/p>\n
AfD was founded in 2013, initially with a focus against eurozone rescue packages. It gained strength following the arrival of a large number of refugees and migrants in 2015, and first entered Germany\u2019s national parliament in 2017.<\/p>\n
Recent national polls have put the party in second place with support around the 20% mark, far above the 10.3% it won in the last federal election in 2021. Other parties refuse to deal with it, while trading blame for the far right\u2019s strength. (AP)<\/p>\n
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BERLIN, 9 Oct: A leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany said on Monday that her party is no longer a primarily eastern German phenomenon after a pair of strong state election perform-ances in the country\u2019s more prosperous west, declaring that \u201cwe have arrived.\u201d The 10-year-old Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is at its strongest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}