Now, with the AfD voted into parliament, Germany is no longer an outlier among its European neighbours. Particularly Merkel’s refugee policy gave anti-Islam protest movements like PEGIDA a large following. The lack of a large far-right party, however, did not mean that there was no nationalistic, anti-establishment sentiment among the German population. While the Front National in France, the PVV in the Netherlands and the FPÖ in Austria all surged in the polls and, in the case of the latter, even participated in government, right-wing populism was kept on the political fringes in the German party landscape. Until recently, Germany was considered one of the few bastions of mainstream, centrist parties left in Europe.
While the pollsters had not been far off, the huge loses of the ruling parties, as well as the big gains for the national conservative AfD, came as a shock to many. On Sunday, 24 th September, Germans were called to the voting booths to elect the next federal parliament, the 19th Bundestag.
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