The far-right Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) has become the coun­try’s most pop­u­lar par­ty accord­ing to a strik­ing new For­sa Insti­tute poll show­ing 26% sup­port, sur­pass­ing Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz’s con­ser­v­a­tive bloc at 24%. On 12 August 2025, Politi­co report­ed this bomb­shell sur­vey result that places the AfD ahead of main­stream par­ties for the first time, adding to con­cerns about ris­ing pop­ulist move­ments across Europe along­side France’s Nation­al Ral­ly and Britain’s Reform UK under Nigel Farage. The arti­cle begins:

The far-right Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) has become the most pop­u­lar par­ty in the coun­try, accord­ing to a strik­ing new poll pub­lished Tues­day. If a nation­al elec­tion were now held, 26 per­cent of Ger­mans would vote for the AfD, accord­ing to a poll car­ried out by the For­sa Insti­tute for Social Research and Sta­tis­ti­cal Analy­sis. That result puts the far-right par­ty ahead of Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz’s main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive bloc, which slid to sec­ond with 24 per­cent sup­port in the poll.

Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-far-right-afd-lead-survey/

Key Points

• The AfD has climbed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since win­ning almost 21% in Feb­ru­ary’s fed­er­al elec­tion, its best-ever result, mak­ing it now the largest oppo­si­tion par­ty in Ger­many’s Bundestag
• Par­ty leader Alice Wei­del, a for­mer econ­o­mist, has shift­ed the AfD from its orig­i­nal euro-skep­tic roots to hard-line anti-migrant and right-wing pop­ulist positions.
• Chan­cel­lor Merz faces grow­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with 67% of Ger­mans say­ing they are “not hap­py” with his per­for­mance after 100 days in office.
• Some main­stream politi­cians argue the AfD is so extreme it should be banned under Ger­man con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions designed to pre­vent a repeat of the Nazi past

AfD and Europe’s Nationalist Alliance: Rise, Reach, and Cross-Border Coordination

The far-right Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) has steadi­ly expand­ed its reach into west­ern Ger­many, erod­ing its image as an east­ern protest par­ty and now fre­quent­ly out­polling tra­di­tion­al par­ties in regions once con­sid­ered immune to such move­ments. This west­ward shift aligns with a broad­er Euro­pean pat­tern where far-right and anti-estab­lish­ment par­ties are gain­ing ground in urban and sub­ur­ban areas, reflect­ing vot­er dis­sat­is­fac­tion with main­stream pol­i­tics and con­cerns over immi­gra­tion and nation­al identity.

As the AfD’s sup­port sur­pass­es 20% nation­al­ly, mount­ing calls to ban the par­ty have emerged, with con­sti­tu­tion­al experts and rival par­ties warn­ing that its extrem­ist posi­tions and grow­ing rad­i­cal­iza­tion present a direct chal­lenge to demo­c­ra­t­ic institutions—a con­cern ampli­fied by the Ger­man intel­li­gence agency’s for­mal clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the AfD as extrem­ist in sev­er­al key branch­es. Mean­while, the AfD’s deep­en­ing ties with Hungary’s Fidesz and the wider Euro­pean nation­al­ist net­work illus­trate its inte­gra­tion into a coor­di­nat­ed, sov­er­eign­tist bloc, with top AfD lead­ers open­ly prais­ing Orbán’s “illib­er­al democ­ra­cy” and par­tic­i­pat­ing in events that show­case cross-bor­der col­lab­o­ra­tion among Europe’s far right.

This inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion, under­scored by the AfD’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Patri­ots for Europe alliance and its lead­ers’ fre­quent vis­its to Budapest, has not only rein­forced the party’s domes­tic pro­file but also embed­ded it with­in a broad­er cam­paign to reshape Europe’s polit­i­cal order, even as Ger­man author­i­ties main­tain a pol­i­cy of non-coop­er­a­tion with par­ties deemed extremist.

Exter­nal References:

1. Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) | Beliefs, Plat­form, Elec­tion Results
2. Alice Wei­del vis­its Budapest: Orbán’s sup­port for the AfD
3. How the far right is expand­ing its inter­na­tion­al network

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.