German far right heading for vote win in east, exit poll projects | BBC News

polls have just closed in two elections in Eastern Germany exit polls from the public broadcaster zdf say that the far-right afd party has won the most votes in the state of Thia but might not be able to form a government the party's anti-immigration wants to replace the Euro with the Deutch Mark and opposes the national government's approach to the war in Ukraine and climate change let's speak to our correspondent in Berlin Damen mcginness Damen give us the figures if you would yes so these are two Regional elections very important when it comes to figuring out uh transport policy as well as education policy very similar in Britain to say what would be the Scottish election election so very important elections in their own right and what we've seen is an historic win for the far right alternative for Germany party the afd in Thia in Saxony the other state also a very important state in Germany uh the afd has not come first place it looked looks like Po's exit polls come second in both cases we're seeing the afd though very strong in theia you're talking about a third of votes look like according to these exit polls have gone to the far right and the reason why that's historic is that the afd has never won the most votes in any Regional election in Germany so they are celebrating the mood is less happy in Saxony because it looks like they're probably coming second but you know crucially Martin either way they're not going to get into government and that's because this is a party that is incredibly radical particularly in this region of Eastern Germany uh Thia the leader of that regional party has been defined by courts as a fascist so legally we can call this man a fascist and that is why no other party will work with the afd so they won't be able to get into governments because you need Coalition Partners what they can do though with a third of the parliament seats taken up by the afd is they can block pretty much any progress they can uh make it very difficult to form any governing Coalition at all because particularly in Thia uh is looking right now almost impossible to form a majority government you're going to have some very wobbly coalitions maybe the conservatives will have to form a coalition with a new radical populist far-left party which is barely possible you might have three-way coalitions maybe in four-way maybe minority governments what that means on the ground for those people in those regions is that going to be very difficult to push through any particular policy and what this means nationally is this is a real signal for national elections next year here in Germany where the national Parliament is going to be voted and um people are really looking at this with fear because what we've seen is the national governing parties in both those states have been really punished Olaf schulz's Center left Social Democrats have really had a battering they managed to get back into Parliament but barely so it's bad news for the central government because it's a bit of a slap in the face with for them to be honest and it is good news for the far right but if the afd have done so well and it's sending a message to the other parties that there is support for their ideas that there is concern amongst voters about matters such as immigration how are they going to respond we've already seen a big response really because immigration and migration as a whole has been a huge Topic in Germany for a long long time and the afd has really influenced particularly the conservative party but also the center-left social Democrats and now to be honest it feels like all anyone talks about here is migration so it can't be said this is an issue which is being ignored the afd has put that onto the agenda what we are seeing though is some specific Regional matters in Eastern Germany to do with the history to do with trauma suffered in the '90s also to do with a traditional lack of Party Loyalty these are voters who are happy to switch parties and a lot of people who voted afd this time might have voted Center left last last time so there's no guarantee this is going to stay and you can't really translate this onto National Politics the difficulty is really is that the afd is in in particularly this particular region has defined itself as a party that wants to undermine the Democratic structure and the state of the democratic government of Germany and that's a difficult position because uh what a lot of politicians would say in other parties is that people are voting for a non-democratic party the difficulty is of course if a third of people are voting for that what do you do how long can you keep up this firewall which essentially is trying to keep out the afd so it's a it's a ongoing question there's no real answer to it the what we will see is um a lot of people looking towards Eastern Germany to see how what now happens these results were expected so it's not going to come as a shock there are going to be more elections in a couple of weeks time which will be less dramatic um and I think once these elections are out the way we're going to see a less ferocious political rhetoric and probably a lot more cooperation with parties and already what we've seen are some quite drastic measures in order to curb migration so probably it's going to have a big effect on National Politics as well Damen mcginness in Berlin thank you very much this is BBC News