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00:00There are two main issues at stake for the moment. First off, as you said, this could be the best
00:03possible result for the AFD, the alternative for Germany in the history of the party.
00:08And that's challenging mainstream parties' commitment to not work with members of the
00:12far right. Now, every party in the center and also in the left wing has long made it a policy
00:18not to embrace the policies of the AFD. They are a Euroskeptic party, an anti-immigration party,
00:23and one that very much is looking to change German policies in the long term.
00:29Now, if they do get the results that they're polling predicted, that could make coalition
00:34building in the local level to be incredibly difficult for the mainstream parties and could
00:38create an issue where we see strange bedfellows at the local level from the right and the left
00:44in an attempt to keep the AFD out of politics. At the exact same time, it's widely viewed as
00:48a bellwether for next year's federal election. A recent survey said that as many as 50 percent of
00:54East German voters are massively dissatisfied with the current policies of the chancellor,
01:00and this could be seen as a test of whether his government can hold on to power next year.
01:05And as you said, the AFD is known as an anti-immigration party.
01:09What have been the main issues for voters in these elections?
01:13Well, these are local elections, but it's really national policies that are at the forefront
01:19of voters' minds. We did have this horrendous knife attack last week in the city of Solingen,
01:24and that's brought issues of migration up and especially asylum-seeking up to the forefront
01:29of many voters' minds, with many people quite skeptical about the German government's policies
01:34in the last 10 years. You have to remember, in 2015, Germany took in a million migrants and
01:39refugees from the Mideast. And then also when the war in Ukraine started, we took in almost as many.
01:44And many people are quite skeptical of the liberal asylum-seeking rules that Germany has
01:50adopted. At the exact same time, issues of war are really at the forefront of people's minds.
01:55There's a lot of skepticism in Eastern Germany for Germany's involvement in supporting Ukraine
02:00in its defense of war against Russia. You have to remember we're talking about people who grew
02:04up in the former Soviet Union, and they do have kind of generally a baseline sympathy for Russia
02:09and a skepticism about Germany's involvement in foreign wars. At the exact same time,
02:14there's a huge amount of dissatisfaction, which is kind of paving the road for these populist
02:18parties, both on the left and the right in Eastern Germany. Many people are dissatisfied
02:22with how Eastern Germany has recovered since reunification and feel that they've really been
02:27left behind by the policies of the current German government in Berlin, which is why I do think
02:33you're seeing such an open door to many of the populist parties, both on the extreme right and
02:39the extreme left in Eastern Germany.