Berlin, Germany – For Susanne, a nursery teacher in Berlin, there is no contest.
She has decided to cast her vote for the hard-right populist party, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), or Alternative for Germany, on February 23 in the country’s snap federal elections.
The election follows the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government in November. The ruling coalition, known as the traffic light alliance, consisted of Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP).
Falling out of favor with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for its pro-vaccine position since the COVID-19 pandemic, Susanne, in her 50s who requested Al Jazeera withhold her surname, said the AfD is the “only party doing something different on the issues that determine our everyday lives.”.
Eva Mueller, a 50-year-old mother of two who works as a careers coach in the German capital, also plans to back the AfD.
“I live in a part of Berlin where around 80 percent of the population has a migration background, and I have no problem with it,” she said.
