Thursday, April 20, 2017

Landscape for AfD Changing

If you follow German political news.....yesterday had an unusual piece.  The chief of the AfD Party in Germany basically said that she was stepping back, and a new person ought to be at the forefront of the party.  Frauke Petry has been around for roughly two years and done a fairly decent job with a start-up political party.  She's pregnant and due in about three months.  I don't think she had the energy level required for the job and this political period leading up to the September election.

A political fight over the job?  There's probably three or four individuals with name recognition and will be voted to the job from within the party mechanism.

The thing is....if you follow polls....AfD has hit some peak, and in recent months been on a slight slide.  Presently (as of this week) AfD is said to be nationally at around 8-percent of the vote.  In some states....they are still in the 15-to-18 percent range. There's no doubt that they will have a minimum of five-percent in the September election, and be part of the future Bundestag.  But the idea that they might have taken 20-percent in a national election?  Gone.

What caused the slide back?  Two chief items....a one-topic party, and the lessening of immigrants coming into Germany.  At the present pace of things, immigration for 2017 will be somewhere around 300,000 to 350,000 by the end of this year.  It's fairly close to the 2012 'normal' flow of 250,000.  The public believes that the Merkel-EU plan....paying three billion Euro a year to Turkey has lessen the flow.  As long as they believe that....then political frustrations are lessened.

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