AfD Electoral Gains Concentrate in Struggling German Regions- Wealthy Areas Resist

The Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) is divid­ing the coun­try rather than sweep­ing it, with far-right gains con­cen­trat­ed in spe­cif­ic regions that are strug­gling, while fail­ing to break through in pros­per­ous areas. On 18 Sep­tem­ber 2025, The Econ­o­mist report­ed that AfD’s recent elec­toral suc­cess in North Rhine-West­phalia reveals a pat­tern of selec­tive growth in post-indus­tri­al cities like Gelsenkirchen, where the par­ty won 30% of coun­cil votes, while under­per­form­ing in wealthy, grad­u­ate-heavy cities. The arti­cle begins:

SAY THIS for Gelsenkirchen: no one is white­wash­ing its prob­lems. It was once a min­ing and steel pow­er­house that fuelled Ger­many’s post­war recov­ery. Now, the best days of this city of 270,000 souls in the post-indus­tri­al Ruhr area are long gone. Gelsenkirchen is weighed down by debt and has long had Ger­many’s high­est unem­ploy­ment rate. A walk down the Bahn­hof­s­trasse, its once-thriv­ing heart, reveals emp­ty­ing shop fronts, an arma­da of mobil­i­ty scoot­ers and a bab­ble of for­eign lan­guages. Fur­ther out are neigh­bour­hoods blight­ed by Schrot­tim­mo­bilien, the dilap­i­dat­ed hous­ing often occu­pied by Roma­ni­ans and Bul­gar­i­ans who since the end of eu free-move­ment restric­tions in 2014 have swollen the city’s wel­fare rolls. Yet things were hard­ly bet­ter before then, says a local. “The city was already a shithole.”

Read more: http://economist.com/europe/2025/09/18/the-afd-is-not-sweeping-germany-but-it-is-dividing-it

Key Points

• AfD won 30% in Gelsenkirchen coun­cil elec­tions but under­per­formed in wealthy cities like Cologne and Münster.
• The par­ty’s growth remains con­cen­trat­ed in east­ern Ger­many and strug­gling west­ern indus­tri­al areas like the Ruhr.
• AfD appeals to work­ers fear­ing job loss­es in tra­di­tion­al indus­tries while fac­ing strong counter-mobi­liza­tion elsewhere.
• Local politi­cians are adapt­ing their posi­tions on immi­gra­tion and Rus­sia pol­i­cy in response to AfD pres­sure in their regions.

Germany’s AfD and the National Conservative Alliance: Russian Connections Exposed

Ger­many’s Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) has emerged as a cru­cial Euro­pean com­po­nent of the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA), demon­strat­ing how far-right move­ments coor­di­nate across bor­ders to advance shared anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic objec­tives. AfD politi­cians planned vis­its to Russ­ian-occu­pied Ukraine despite wide­spread crit­i­cism, illus­trat­ing the par­ty’s align­ment with Moscow’s strate­gic inter­ests and its will­ing­ness to legit­imize Russ­ian ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains. The par­ty oper­ates as a nation­al-con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment with bridges to Ger­many’s right-wing extrem­ism, posi­tion­ing itself with­in broad­er Euro­pean net­works that reject lib­er­al democ­ra­cy and pro­mote author­i­tar­i­an gov­er­nance models.

The AfD’s inte­gra­tion into transna­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive alliances extends beyond indi­vid­ual polit­i­cal rela­tion­ships to sys­tem­at­ic ide­o­log­i­cal coor­di­na­tion with Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions. RT Deutsch showed sig­nif­i­cant con­gru­ence with AfD posi­tions on con­tro­ver­sial top­ics, demon­strat­ing how Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da chan­nels align with and ampli­fy far-right mes­sag­ing in Ger­many. This coor­di­na­tion reflects the broad­er strat­e­gy described in GIOR’s analy­sis of the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance, where Euro­pean far-right move­ments serve as vehi­cles for Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions while advanc­ing shared nation­al­ist and anti-insti­tu­tion­al agen­das that chal­lenge demo­c­ra­t­ic norms and Euro­pean unity.

The AfD’s role with­in Ger­many rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal test case for how glob­al nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments pen­e­trate estab­lished demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems through elec­toral suc­cess com­bined with sys­tem­at­ic insti­tu­tion­al ero­sion. The par­ty’s more sub­stan­tial sup­port in east­ern Ger­many, where his­toric ties include resid­ual cul­tur­al empa­thy with Rus­sia, demon­strates how Moscow lever­ages region­al divi­sions and his­tor­i­cal griev­ances to advance its strate­gic objec­tives. As the AfD con­tin­ues to poll as poten­tial­ly Ger­many’s sec­ond-largest par­ty, its suc­cess threat­ens to nor­mal­ize author­i­tar­i­an pol­i­tics with­in Europe’s most pow­er­ful democ­ra­cy, while pro­vid­ing Rus­sia with increased oppor­tu­ni­ties for polit­i­cal influ­ence and under­min­ing West­ern uni­ty on Ukraine and broad­er secu­ri­ty issues.

Exter­nal References:

• Key facts about Ger­many’s AfD par­ty and its supporters
• AfD becomes first far-right par­ty to win Ger­man state elec­tion since 1945
• Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) Par­ty: What You Need To Know

Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.