When you look at the 'success' of the AfD Party in German politics since 2015 (really a brief four-year period), it is based upon six central elements:
1. A perception exists with a majority of Germans that 'problem-children' (usually male, and in the bracket of 15 to 25 years old) migrants. But this group is split. Some have a willing nature to vote AfD (both locally and nationally), but this is probably in the 16-to-18 percent nationally now. Most will tell you that the AfD is too immature, radical, and limited on policy issues for them to vote AfD. For this reason, the bulk of other parties still enjoy a fair amount of positive numbers.
2. The failed-applicants. It's rarely brought out and discussed in a public setting....but if you were a migrant from Iraq or Syria....you tended to have your visa-application approved at the 95-percent level. If you were from Morocco, Algeria, Afghanistan, Tunisia, or Libya....it's closer to the 5-to-8 percent level. Rather than admit that there is a divided system, and that the bulk of young male migrants....not from Syria or Iraq....fail the application, it's just simply skipped over.
3. The failed-applicants failing to leave. So you end up with this list of people (mostly young males) who failed the visa application and just simply won't voluntary leave. They get the failed application paperwork, and usually go to the delay process....to challenge via the court system, and hope to reverse the situation. The news media typically avoids this topic, but will admit on occasion that maybe ten-percent of the appeals do get reversed.
4. The failed-applicants fighting the police to avoid that last plane ride. This has been brought up over the past two years and gets occasionally hyped. Man-hours are being added up and it's become a 'pain-in-the-ass' for the police to carry out these returns to the homeland.
5. Terror threats. As the ISIS war downsized over the past two years.....you tend to see terror threats in Germany as greatly reduced. The problem here is that folks remember the threats in the UK, France, and Belgium....with the small handful that were conducted in Germany. The Germans also gaze upon local fests and fairs now, which have security enhancements added, and note more cops walking the fest area with weapons and body-armor. Back in 2010, you might have gone to a town-fest with just two cop patrols (two cops each), and today.....there's at least five or six patrols (two to four cops each) making the same patrol.
6. Assaults and knife fights. Germans always got drunk at beer fests, and fights would occur. But with this new migrant crowd (young men)....there is potential for the fights to involve knives, and typically involve some deadly wounds, or dead folks. These get into the news, and then the typical community response is....why are these knife fights so frequent these days?
All of these are seized upon by the pro-AfD community and pushed to help influence votes. If the CDU/SPD coalition could get a handle over these, and resolve these issues....the AfD would rapidly lose votes. So far, nothing has really helped.
I do agree....more cops are being hired (10,000 are added between 2018 to 2020). Some communities are making up anti-knife zones and triggering massive fines if you are found to be in the zone with a knife. Some efforts are being made to influence the failed applicants to just give up and leave. If you look at incoming migrant numbers....we are back to the 200k to 250k normal number that had been seen for two decades prior to 2014. But at this present pace with all the 'fixes'....it may be a decade before the AfD trend reverses.
So no peak yet for AfD? I would argue that the peak has yet to occur, and they might eventually reach 30-percent in the national vote. All of these then goes back with some blame for Merkel, and the intellectual group who avoided discussing the matter and running an effective immigration program. In this case, the AfD simply held the better cards in this 'game', and has bluffed their way to a political success pattern.
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