Diana Zimmer hopes to make history in Germany’s federal election on Sunday. The 26-year-old business studies graduate is running for the Bundestag in her home town of Pforzheim, near Stuttgart, and hopes to be the first-ever direct candidate elected in western Germany for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The AfD was founded in 2013 and, in its first decade, grew mostly in eastern German states. Today, local support in some eastern regions is close to 40 per cent. Since the last federal election in 2021, however, the party has doubled its support nationwide to 20 per cent in polls. That is due to the AfD putting western Germany in its sights, and Zimmer, dubbed in local posters “the best of the west”, is one face of this new push.
In campaign appearances and online discussions, Zimmer insists only the AfD can defend German values and end Germany’s “migration madness” that has seen over seven million people come into the country into the last decade. If this continues, she argues, immigration will endanger both domestic security and the welfare state.
“We need to put a stop sign before this madness ... and we’re gaining prominent support thanks to Elon Musk giving us attention around the world,” said Zimmer. At a recent campaign appearance, she made a final pitch to voters: “Trust us and we will show what we can do for Germany – Germany first.”
Her home town of Pforzheim is located in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, halfway between the region’s two historic capitals of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Once the centre of Germany’s gold and jewellery industries, today the city is struggling with massive post-industrial structural change and an unemployment rate of 7.3 per cent. That’s less than one point above the national figure, but three points above the state average.
In Pforzheim’s local and European elections last June, the AfD overtook the local centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for the first time to secure 22 per cent and 23 per cent respectively.
Many see in Pforzheim an early indicator of what lies ahead for the rest of western Germany’s post-industrial belt.
A key factor in the swing to the AfD, many locals say, is a feeling of alienation, given that the non-national population has risen to more than half the local population of 125,000. This is the result of steady mass immigration that began long before the recent arrival of Syrians, Afghans and north Africans.
Zimmer’s parents are part of the Russian-German community who left the Soviet Union to settle in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. Thousands were settled in a new district on the fringes of Pforzheim. Their memories of early hardships after arrival - in particular, cuts to their welfare and pensions lower than for native Germans - have left many resentful of the full welfare payments offered to more recent Syrian and Ukrainian asylum seekers.
Adding to the anger and tension is a series of fatal attacks in recent months with asylum seekers as chief suspects. For local analysts, a decade of political debate over migration has yet to see voters get convincing answers from established parties.
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“Simply distancing themselves from the AfD doesn’t work, the question is, what would they do better,” said Prof Frank Brettschneider of the nearby University of Hohenheim. “The AfD is too much at the centre of attention, even in the communication of the other parties. I think the others would be better off talking more about themselves and acting together from the political centre.”
Polls after state elections across Germany in the last two years turn up the same pattern. When asked why they backed the AfD, up to 90 per cent of respondents agree with the phrase “to put pressure on the government to change its course on asylum policy”. In a 2023 regional poll in western Germany, one in two voters said they voted AfD because of fears over high levels of immigration.
Back in Pforzheim, centre-right CDU politician Gunther Krichbaum agrees that the rise of the AfD here and this campaign’s focus on migration have their roots in voter uncertainty.
Expressions of regret after another fatal knife or car attack are no longer enough, argues Krichbaum. He backs CDU leader Friedrich Merz’s promises of reformed migration laws - as well as a radical pruning of red tape and measures to lower energy bills.
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“People trusted Angela Merkel because she led people through many difficult storms. The outgoing ‘traffic light’ coalition bickered for years, which has lead to huge levels of insecurity,” he said.
Weeks after a controversial CDU migration vote, which passed the Bundestag with AfD support, Krichbaum insists his party will not co-operate in any way in the new parliament with the far-right party. But the shock of that vote has made itself felt in the campaign, he says, and divided opinion strongly into two camps.
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One camp is delighted, the other horrified, that Josef Merz’s CDU - likely to lead the next federal government - is pushing a tougher line on migration and asylum.
“We need a government that doesn’t bicker but gives people the feeling they know in which direction things are moving,” said Krichbaum, “and that things won’t continue as they have been.”
