A failure to address widespread economic insecurity, and a crisis in living standards, is allowing the far right the harness a growing protest vote

After less than a year and a half in office, Germany’s beleaguered chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is already looking like a lame duck leader. Anticipating dire results in two state elections which were held on Sunday, Mr Merz cancelled a planned speech at this week’s United Nations general assembly in order to plot an emergency response. A night of extraordinary humiliation for his conservative Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) must have confounded even his own low expectations.

In the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) won its second regional election this month with 38% of the vote. The CDU meanwhile recorded its worst result since the second world war, failing even to meet the 5% threshold for representation in the state parliament. Mr Merz took over the leadership of the CDU promising to see off the threat of the AfD. Instead it has ascended to a menacing and unprecedented position of electoral strength, and enjoys a comfortable lead in national polls.

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Merz seeks to shore up support after CDU loses two state elections and is ejected from Mecklenburg parliament

• Latest German election humiliation puts Merz on borrowed time as CDU unrest grows

Germany’s beleaguered leader, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to keep his fractious coalition government together for the good of the country’s “democratic future” after his conservative party suffered a drubbing at the polls in two state elections.

Merz, who has vowed to plough ahead with an unpopular reform agenda, dismissed speculation over his position, saying it was vital that he and his coalition government remained in place.

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to stay in office despite heavy losses in two state elections that he described as a ‘disaster’. The anti-immigration, Kremlin-friendly Alternative für Deutschland won with 38% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while the leftwing Die Linke was victorious in Berlin.

Merz has promised political change, but speculation is growing that his party could soon oust him. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, Deborah Cole.

Far-right AfD wins in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and leftwing Die Linke on course for victory in Berlin

Germany’s embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to stay in office and fight for future-proofing economic changes despite heavy losses for his conservatives in two state elections, one to the far right and the other to a leftwing party.

Preliminary results indicated Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) tallied just 4.9% in the coastal region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, below ⁠the 5% threshold needed to enter the state parliament and indicating they may be excluded altogether. It would be the CDU’s worst-ever state score, which Merz called a “disaster”.

Embattled Friedrich Merz faces nervous wait while far-right Alternative für Deutschland party targets further gains

Voters in two German states are going to the polls with the political future of the embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, hanging in the balance and an emboldened far right targeting further gains.

Coming two weeks after a seismic election in Saxony-Anhalt in which the anti-immigration, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) scored its highest ever result in a regional poll, the nativist party is expected to drain support again from Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Instead, constrain it legally and fight it politically. The world is watching

Far-right nationalist populist parties are making the running everywhere from Washington to Warsaw. So why be so alarmed about a little regional electoral victory for one such party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), in one federal state, Saxony-Anhalt? “Because it’s Germany!” is the almost instinctive answer in many heads around the world.

But that “because it’s Germany” needs to be taken apart, like the segments of an orange. Yes, because of Adolf Hitler, two dictatorships (Nazi Germany until 1945, communist-ruled East Germany until 1989) and two world wars. And yes, some of the language used by the AfD will give anyone familiar with Nazi rhetoric a cold shudder down the spine.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist. His new book, Europe in 7 1/2 Chapters, is published in October

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• Comments follow far-right election win in Saxony-Anhalt

• ‘I’d like to reclaim the flag for myself and for us,’ he says

Jürgen Klopp has said Germany’s football team can help ensure “national pride is not entrusted to the wrong people” after a recent far-right AfD election victory.

In a Frankfurt press conference announcing his first Germany squad, the former Liverpool manager referenced a recent state election win by the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party.

German chancellor gets support from state leaders but further far-right gains this weekend could spell the end

Powerful German state leaders from Friedrich Merz’s party have rallied behind him as speculation builds that his days in office may be numbered.

The chancellor’s hold on power has looked increasingly shaky since a bombshell regional election result earlier this month in which the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party routed his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in Saxony-Anhalt.

After a desperately tight race, voters rejected the prospect of the far right in government. A potential centre-left coalition needs to seize the moment

European progressives searching for reasons to be cheerful have been finding them hard to come by this autumn. In Germany, the dramatic rise of the Alternative für Deutschland party is threatening the liberal values that underpin the identity of the federal republic. In France, polls continue to point to a likely Marine Le Pen victory in a presidential election, which is months away. Across mainland Europe, centre-left parties are failing to muster an adequate response to nativist movements that have colonised swathes of the working-class support that they once relied on.

In such an ominous political landscape, the outcome of a cliffhanger Swedish election provides a much‑needed source of optimism – albeit one that comes with heavy caveats. Prior to last Sunday’s poll, the outgoing prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, was explicit that if his rightwing alliance won the largest number of seats, he would invite members of the far-right Sweden Democrats party (SD) to become ministers in the next government.

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Grievance politics has grown in the east of the country where I was born. But west Germans have hard questions to answer too

The fear that a fascist, far-right movement would rise to power again in Germany has been with me since my youth. On 6 September, the far-right, anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt, becoming the biggest party in the state parliament, with a shocking 44% of the vote, on a record turnout. If it finds a way to power it will be the first far-right party to govern a German state since the Nazi era.

The night before the vote, I sent a message to a friend, who, like myself, has an East German background. Was she as worried, scared even, about the vote as I was, I asked. I’d fallen into a loop for days, scrolling videos, reels, reports, interviews done on the ground. And I knew these AfD voters. They could have been relatives, friends of my parents, old teachers, former schoolmates. Why were they saying such incoherent stuff?

The billionaire and the party have developed a symbiotic relationship to spread their far-right views both in Germany and the US

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party rattled European politics this week after a convincing victory in a German state election, which placed it only a few seats away from forming the country’s first state-level far right government since the second world war.

Elon Musk was thrilled.

Many fear chancellor is wrong man for the job at a time when Germany’s defences against far right are crumbling

A cataclysm. A 9.0 earthquake. A five-alarm fire. A bitter rejection of Germany’s joyous reunification three decades ago, and a threat to the democratic postwar order.

Sizing up the repercussions of last weekend’s win for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in the former communist state of Saxony-Anhalt, German commentators expressed a sense of doom, panic and helplessness in the political establishment.

Far-right German party’s newly elected representatives face fresh scrutiny as it tries to form government in Saxony-Anhalt

• Why is the AfD’s state victory significant and what might happen next?

The Alternative für Deutschland is facing scrutiny over the suitability of some of its prospective new MPs – including a former Stasi officer and a former pornography actor – just days after its historic win in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Presented by the AfD’s lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, for a photocall in the state capital of Magdeburg on Thursday, some of the members-elect were revealed to have a range of questionable backgrounds, including criminal records, Stasi pasts and connections to far-right networks.

After the AfD’s landslide win in Saxony-Anhalt, people in the state capital share what they make of the result – and what comes next

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Asking residents in a city where a seismic political event has just taken place ‘How do you feel?’ demands chutzpah – this struck me as I walked around Magdeburg, Germany on Monday. The night before, the far-right populist, anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin party Alternative für Deustchland (AfD) had landslide 44% win in Saxony-Anhalt’s state elections, sending shock waves to Berlin, across Germany and way beyond. Regardless of how people in the capital voted, it felt like a bit of an affront to probe. Given the radical plans of the victors, a party classified by domestic intelligence as “rightwing extremist”, that is what I wanted to know. But from the 21-year-old Guinean-German paramedic I met at the central bus station, collecting donations for a local hospice, to the elderly couple returning to their apartment after a stroll down the Elbe river, almost everyone I met opened up to me warmly.

Judith, 88, was initially reluctant to talk, but shared some of her life story. Her experience as an eight-year-old refugee, forced to leave Poland in 1946 and eventually ending up move with her family in Magdeburg, had shaped her outlook on life, her successful career as a project engineer – as well as her politics. The news that AfD had not only won the election, but by such a wide margin, was “heartbreaking”, she said.

German chancellor attacks Alternative für Deutschland after far-right party’s win in Saxony-Anhalt election

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has accused the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) of seeking “ethnic cleansing” with its “remigration” drive, after the nativist party’s seismic weekend victory in a state election.

In his first public confrontation with the AfD since Sunday’s shock outcome in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz said at a raucous parliamentary debate that the far-right party would take an axe to one of the pillars of the German economy with a racist campaign of mass deportations.

Far-right parties, Maga ideology and Kremlin money are conniving to suffocate liberal idealism for another generation

Not all that long ago, Europe was a beacon of liberal idealism. One memoir recalls it as an era “comfortably saturated with confidence in the unfailing and binding power of tolerance and conciliation”. The economic system seemed obviously preferable to barbarous alternatives. “People honestly believed that the divergencies and the boundaries between nations and sects would gradually melt away into a common humanity,” the author added.

Those words could describe the spirit of globalisation at the turn of the millennium. They were written in the 1930s by Stefan Zweig, reflecting on the optimism of late 19th-century Vienna from the perspective of a Jewish émigré whose world had been destroyed by murderous nationalism. Zweig took his own life in 1942. He never saw fascism defeated. He couldn’t have imagined a renaissance of liberalism in the second half of the 20th century so complete as to attain a pitch of complacency rivalling the one he remembered from his childhood.

Spokesperson for Merz declines to give a reason for cancellation, but notes that it was not due to scheduling

• German chancellor accuses far-right AfD party of seeking ‘ethnic cleansing’

Back to Oslo, the funeral procession for King Harald is about the begin, and the 1.2km route to the Oslo Cathedral is lined up with 1,900 soldiers from all branches of the Norwegian defence forces.

The procession is expected to walk very slowly – at around 60 steps per minute – and will include the royal family, including King Haakon, followed by a royal car with the widow, Queen Sonja.

Alarm that Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania may fall next after party’s Saxony-Anhalt election victory

• ‘It breaks my heart’: victory sparks dismay

• Europe live – latest updates

Thousands of Germans have staged protests against the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) after the party’s watershed victory in a state election, warning it posed a danger in two more polls this month.

Demonstrators at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate held a peaceful pro-democracy rally denouncing the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian AfD, which has called for mass deportations of asylum seekers and a rollback of state support for renewable energy and public broadcasting.

The anti-fascist consensus about our Nazi past is fundamental to German democracy. But that, shockingly, is being shattered

As shock at the scale of the far right’s resounding state-election victory in Germany reverberated on Sunday, not everybody was unhappy.

Seconds after the first exit polls from Saxony-Anhalt were revealed, Donald Trump posted the results on his Truth Social platform, seemingly delighted by the devastation of the centrist-conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the surge of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Jörg Lau is an international correspondent for the German weekly Die Zeit

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Fears expressed for immigrants and for country’s future after AfD vote hits historic high in Saxony-Anhalt

Maryam and her best friend were ambling through Magdeburg toward the railway station, talking over the dramatic events of the previous evening and the surge by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland to a historically high vote in the Saxony-Anhalt elections.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said, “but I wish we could go back to the days of Angela Merkel, when things were OK in Germany”.