As AfD hits a record 30%, its long war on Muslims moves toward German mainstream

BERLIN (MNTV) — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has reached 30% support in a nationwide poll for the first time, opening a 10-point lead over Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives — a milestone that underscores how a party built substantially on hostility toward Islam and Muslims has moved from the margins toward the heart of German politics.

The GMS survey published Monday put Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, at just 20% — the lowest level GMS has ever recorded for the conservatives. 

Together with the Social Democrats at 11%, the chancellor’s coalition would fall short of a parliamentary majority if elections were held this week. 

The Greens rose to 14% and the Left Party to 11%, while the liberal Free Democrats and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance both sat below the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.

The numbers mark a dramatic shift from the February 2025 federal election, when Merz’s CDU/CSU won 28.5% and the AfD 20.8%. Since GMS last asked the question in late July, the AfD — which campaigns relentlessly against immigration — has gained two points while the conservatives have lost three.

Decade of anti-Muslim politics

The AfD’s surge cannot be understood apart from the anti-Muslim politics that have defined it for years. 

Founded in 2013 as a Eurosceptic party, it recast itself during the 2015 refugee influx as the country’s foremost anti-Islam movement — and has stayed there ever since.

Its leaders have made the rejection of Islam explicit rather than coded. 

The party’s programme has declared that Islam does not belong to Germany, and senior figures have described the religion as incompatible with the German constitution. It has campaigned against mosque construction, minarets and the call to prayer, agitated against halal food and Islamic religious education in schools, and, only this week, renewed its demand for a ban on headscarves for schoolgirls, invoking the defence of “Western values.”

More radically, prominent AfD figures have embraced the language of “remigration” — the mass deportation of migrants and, in its most extreme formulations, of citizens of foreign origin. 

A 2024 report of a secret meeting at which the concept was discussed, attended by AfD members, triggered some of the largest protests in Germany’s postwar history. 

The party’s strongholds in the formerly communist east, where it now dominates, have been classified in parts as confirmed right-wing extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence service.

From fringe to frontrunner

What has changed is not the AfD’s message but its reach. The party’s record 43.8% win in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6 — a state election in which it finished far ahead of all rivals — demonstrated that its politics are no longer confined to protest voters but command outright pluralities. Monday’s national poll suggests that strength is nationwide.

That advance has begun to reshape the mainstream itself. Germany’s own peace researchers warned this year that anti-Muslim racism has become structurally entrenched, and cautioned Merz’s conservatives specifically against adopting the rhetoric of the far right in an effort to win back voters — a temptation that grows as the CDU/CSU hemorrhages support. 

The renewed headscarf debate, pushed by the AfD but drawing in the establishment parties, is a case in point.

Chancellor under pressure

The poll lands ahead of regional elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin on Sunday, votes now seen as a test of Merz’s own future after the Saxony-Anhalt defeat. Media speculation about a possible change of chancellor has intensified for weeks, with North Rhine-Westphalia premier Hendrik Wüst floated as a potential successor.

 A leadership fight would not by itself trigger a snap election; if party pressure forced Merz out, parliament could elect a new chancellor without a national vote.

For Germany’s roughly 5.5 million Muslims, the trajectory is unsettling whatever the outcome of any leadership contest. A party that has spent a decade casting their faith as alien to Germany is no longer knocking at the door of national politics — it is, on current polling, the most popular party in the country.