Germany’s rightward shift reflects Pennsylvania’s Rust Belt realignment — and Democratic failures with the working class

COTTBUS, Germany — The coal mine here shuttered 10 years ago, bolstering fears among residents of the east German city of being left behind, a feeling that has lingered since reunification just 35 years ago.

Today, Cottbus has shifted politically rightward, and away from the previously dominant Social Democratic Party — which, along with Germany’s other left-leaning parties, is grappling with how to hold on in the approaching election. The city’s turn is at the core of a political realignment in Germany, which holds its federal election on Sunday — the first European contest since President Donald Trump was elected to a second term.

“The situation in Germany is we lost contact to each other,” said Maja Wallstein, an incumbent candidate with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Cottbus who is hoping to retain her seat in Parliament. “It feels like having a glass door between each other. We see each other, we see the other person is talking, but we cannot hear.”

It’s hard not to see the political parallels between Cottbus, a city of 100,000 about 75 miles south of Berlin, and Rust Belt swaths of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Economically, Cottbus is doing far better — with trendy cafes, a charming central square, and a multimillion-dollar infusion to transition the region from fossil fuels and create new jobs.

But politically, the region’s rightward shift and the issues fueling it — a sense of economic inferiority, frustration with government, fears of migration, and rampant online misinformation — mimic a trend among working-class voters both across Germany and the United States. The struggles incumbent parties face are similar, too. Democratic strategists in Germany watched the U.S. campaign closely this fall, noting how even in decidedly blue American cities like Philadelphia, Democrats struggled to maintain support with working-class voters. In rural and Rust Belt areas, their losses were even greater.

» READ MORE: Can Kamala Harris win back support in Pa.’s Trump-friendly Rust Belt?

“Germany was convinced Kamala Harris would make it, and I think we have a little of that phenomenon in our own country,” said Anke Frieling, a Hamburg member of Parliament and member of the Christian Democratic Union, the center-right Democratic party, which is leading in the polls. “Not seeing the shift to the right and how we forget about certain parts of the population.”

Not unlike the red wave ushered in as Trump was elected in November, the far-right party in Germany, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), is poised to gain more seats in Brandenberg, the region encompassing Cottbus, than ever, and finish second overall in the country’s election Sunday. In 2024, the AfD became the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since the Nazi era.

And Trump’s allies have been vocally supportive of the AfD.

Last week in Munich, Vice President JD Vance met with the leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, and urged German political parties to work with her — to the shock of many in attendance. And, as in Pennsylvania during the 2024 presidential election, billionaire Elon Musk has injected himself into the campaign here, endorsing Weidel, and hosting an X talk with her in the lead-up to the election. (Musk endorsed Trump, stumped for him throughout Pennsylvania, and hosted an X talk with him ahead of the U.S. election, too.)

Now, German voters who oppose the AfD, which some critics have called antidemocratic, are drawing concerning parallels between Trump’s first few weeks in the White House and the right-wing populism in Germany.

“Watching from this side of the Atlantic, it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh, will this come over the Atlantic?’” asked Elke Teichert, a 67-year-old retired teacher, who protests with a group, Omas Gegen Rechts, or Grandmas Against the Right.

For Teichert, whose father fought for Germany in WWII, her nation’s history makes the country’s current political situation even more urgent.

“We are the last generation with links to this history,” she said. “Now, we are confronted by a right-wing party movement who is trying to minimize this story.”

Germany’s six major political parties have pledged not to work with the AfD, an anti-immigration, anti-Islam party, which the country’s domestic intelligence agency is investigating for suspected right-wing extremism — an assertion to which the AfD strongly objects.

“The AfD is a conservative party from the center of the society,” said Jean-Pascal Hohm, an AfD member of Parliament from Cottbus.

“Because the established parties can’t debate with arguments, the accusation of right-wing extremism serves to defame the only real opposition in Germany. Our voters know that these claims are a testament to the failure of these old parties and are only meant to preserve their power.”

The Democratic “firewall” against working with the AfD has led to unusual alliances among Germany’s other Democratic parties. But those relationships have already been tested. Earlier this month, Frederick Merz, head of the Christian Democratic Union and front-runner to become the next chancellor, pushed forward a resolution on migration with the support of the AfD, to the chagrin of many Democrats.

Merz has since reiterated he won’t form a government with the AfD, but the vote still sparked nationwide protests and warnings from opposing parties.

The rise of the far right is complicated in Germany, where Holocaust denialism or using Nazi symbols is a crime, troops of volunteers polish cobblestones engraved with victims’ names to preserve the history, and “Never Again” is a national slogan.

“There are enough people alive still in Germany that remember it, or their parents remember it, and their kids are taught it,” said Johanna Lohmann, 69, a retiree who lives in Hamburg, who said she sees the AfD as “a real danger for democracy,” but sees the United States’ challenges as worse.

There has been debate over whether the AfD should be a constitutionally recognized party. But as it has grown — doubling in popularity over the last three years — its exclusion from the political system has also been cast as antidemocratic and perhaps led to its growth.

“My view is this attempt to stigmatize dissenting opinions, to radicalize dissenting opinions, was the wrong course, it strengthened the real radicals,” said Thomas Silberhorn, a member of Parliament who belongs to the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, a Christian Democratic and conservative political party aligned with the CDU.

The AfD has run a campaign focused on anti-elitism, the working class, and immigration — issues that also helped bolster Trump in parts of Pennsylvania last year.

Hohm, with the AfD, called his party “the last party still fighting for the interests of the people.” In Cottbus and areas like it, he said, immigration and the end of mining are major concerns to people.

“For decades, the coal industry was the heartbeat of this region and the ill-considered phaseout, without first creating comparable alternatives, has hit the people hard,” he said.

The sentiments mirror Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, where he almost unilaterally focused his rally speeches on curbing immigration, promising economic resurgence, and vowing to “Drill, baby, drill” when it came to fracking.

» READ MORE: Democrats kept calling Trump a fascist, but these Pennsylvania voters thought he could help them pay the bills

And the AfD, like Trump’s recent campaign, dominates German social media — often promoting misinformation that fuels its message, particularly with younger voters.

“COVID made younger people angry, it caused a resentment and disinterest in politics,” said Johanna Seidel, an organizer with the Social Democrats in Cottbus. “And then AfD found TikTok and started flooding the platforms. Many young people that put politics aside before because they felt like no one is caring about us, they felt like, ‘OK, now they’re talking to me, they’re caring for me.’ There’s some dude telling you, ‘You’re German. Be proud.’”

In Pennsylvania, Trump similarly tapped into a feeling of being left behind and promised to end “wokeism” and renew national pride, something that particularly resonated with men, polls showed.

» READ MORE: These young voters have been sold on Donald Trump since childhood. Here’s how he held their attention.

While the parallels between Trump and the AfD’s campaign are apparent, it’s unclear if Trump has directly bolstered support for the German right-wing party, which has exhibited some anti-American sentiments.

It’s also unclear whether Musk’s involvement has improved the AfD’s support in Germany, though he has long had influence in the country. Musk’s Tesla is the largest private employer in Brandenberg, and his SpaceX has inspired a wave of aerospace startups in Munich. Still, Tesla sales have recently plummeted as Musk makes headlines in America and some German Tesla owners have the bumper stickers also spotted in the U.S. that read: “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.”

Frieling, with the center-right CDU, said she has viewed Trump’s first month in power with “concern,” which she thinks is the sentiment of many in her party. “He’s flooding your country but also ours with these ideas that are not fully worked out, but I don’t think anyone would laugh, because you don’t know with him.”

Still, she understands how Germans eager for a shake-up look at Trump and see action, when in Germany, coalition governments can move slowly.

“There’s quite a few people in this country who feel ‘Well there is someone who is really going to change things.’ … People are tired of compromise, and that’s why they’re fascinated by Donald Trump.”

The SPD watched Harris’ failed campaign an ocean away and decided for Germany’s February election to focus almost unilaterally on pocketbook issues. They printed out bar coasters with a list of cost-saving measures attributed to Social Democratic policies. They set up an online calculator where Germans can find out how much recent government initiatives have saved them.

“It’s pretty similar to what we have seen with the Democrats” in the U.S., said Tim Herrmann, a strategist with the SPD. “People perceive Social Democracy less as a worker’s movement and more as a leftist urban party … so this campaign is basically meant to counter this, tell people that we are talking about their problems.”

But, as with Harris and former President Joe Biden’s administration, it’s been a struggle to connect with voters on the economy as the party in power. And the economic messaging is drowned out by debate around migration, which reached a fever pitch in recent months after a series of attacks committed by migrants, including an incident in Munich just 10 days before the election.

In Pennsylvania last year, polling consistently showed the economy was the No. 1 issue for voters, but among Trump supporters, it was immigration. Trump effectively, though without much evidence, tied fears around illegal immigration to the economy in a way that resonated with the electorate.

As was the case in Pennsylvania and across the United States last year, voters across the spectrum in Germany say they are unhappy with their options, including the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz of the SPD.

“No party has really connected with us at the moment,” said Denny Lehmann, 39, a student studying information and media technology in Cottbus who was unsure how he would vote, though he said it would not be for the AfD.

For candidates like the SDP’s Wallstein, the strategy in her purple Pennsylvania-esque district is to talk to everyone. She goes door-to-door, chronicling in red books all the stories and concerns people share with her. She has filled six already.

“A lot of people who vote today for the AfD were voters of the Social Democrats before,” she said. “It’s a widespread field why people vote AfD and that’s the reason why there’s not only one solution to beat them. There are many. But we have to start by building relationships.”

Though alarmed by the AfD’s gains, left-leaning voters across Germany expressed a healthy dose of confidence that their multiparty system and governance structure would not allow for the major changes Trump and Musk have deployed in the U.S.

If polling holds, the AfD will finish with the second-most votes behind the CDU, but will be a minority opposition party — if others observe their firewall pledge not to form a government with the AfD.

“There’s more respect for justice, more respect for the separation of powers, and also respect for the election here,” said Werner Froemming, 71, a retiree who managed cultural institutions in Hamburg. Still, he described Trump’s revamping of the United States’ federal government as “a horror,” and questioned why there wasn’t more opposition on American streets.

“I’m waiting for Democrats to let out a big cry in America to stop all this, but I don’t hear it,” he said at a campaign event in Hamburg earlier this month.

Nearby, German voter Corinna Alstädt chatted with the incumbent mayor as he handed out red roses, a symbol of his Social Democratic Party. She said she supports the SPD, but lamented the election has become less about policies and more about keeping the AfD out of power. Alstädt said she sees Trump’s impact all over her country’s national election.

“Politicians [on the right] took clues and said, ‘Look how it’s done in America, that’s how we do it here,‘” the mother of two said. “Because we are making Germany great again.”

Reporter Julia Terruso traveled to Germany as part of a reporting fellowship funded by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a nonprofit political organization. The foundation had no editorial oversight of this reporting.