Europe's mainstream parties face reckoning as far-right surge reshapes continent

On Sunday, voters in Saxony-Anhalt handed the Alternative für Deutschland nearly 44 percent of the vote—a result that nearly doubled the party's previous performance in the state and marked its strongest showing in any regional election to date. The centre-right CDU, led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, fell to 17.2 percent, less than half what it managed five years earlier. The centre-left SPD, which has anchored German governance for roughly six decades, scraped together 9.3 percent. The political middle, in other words, did not survive the day intact.

The AfD's ascent matters partly because of what the party represents. It traffics in Nazi imagery, draws distinctions between Germans by biology and those by passport, and has positioned itself so far to the right that even Marine Le Pen, France's far-right standard-bearer, considers it beyond the pale. The party's eastern branch carries an official designation from Germany's domestic intelligence service: confirmed rightwing extremist. With 39 seats in an 83-member parliament, the AfD now sits tantalizingly close to governing power in a German state—closer than any far-right party has come since the Second World War.

Yet Saxony-Anhalt, a state of 1.8 million people, has long been particular terrain. It has consistently backed the AfD at roughly double the national average over the past decade, making it less a harbinger of Germany's future than a window into a region already primed for the party's message. Political scientists caution against treating a single regional result as proof of continental transformation. Still, the AfD leads in national polling. It is ahead in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where elections arrive later this month. It places second even in liberal Berlin. And the broader pattern across Europe is unmistakable.

Research coordinated by more than 150 political scientists across 31 countries found that nearly one in four European voters now cast ballots for far-right parties—a proportion that has grown nearly fivefold since the mid-1990s, when such parties claimed roughly 5 percent of the vote. The climb has accelerated sharply in just the past three years. Far-right movements now sit in government as part of ruling coalitions in Croatia, Czechia, Italy, and Finland. They prop up a minority government in Sweden. They lead in polls in Austria, Belgium, France, and Germany. The trend has suffered occasional reversals—Geert Wilders's Freedom Party lost nearly a third of its seats in the Netherlands last year, and Viktor Orbán's Fidesz fell to a centre-right challenger in Hungary this spring—but the overall direction remains unmistakable.

Why has the centre collapsed so thoroughly? Mainstream parties in Germany and France have maintained what analysts call a firewall or cordon sanitaire, refusing to govern alongside far-right movements. Some observers argue this strategy has backfired catastrophically. By keeping the AfD out of power, they suggest, Germany's establishment parties have shielded it from the grinding compromises and inevitable failures that come with governing. Meanwhile, the centre itself has hollowed out, forced into uncomfortable, unstable coalitions that accomplish little and frustrate voters further. Each failed government pushes more people toward the extremes. The cycle feeds itself.

Yet political scientists largely reject this diagnosis. Research examining more than 1,300 governments across 57 countries found that far-right parties entering government actually increased their vote share by an average of six percentage points at the next election. The firewall, in other words, may not be the culprit. Instead, analysts point to two deeper forces: the persistent failure of mainstream governments to address the cost-of-living crisis that has hollowed out voters' faith in centrist solutions, and more fundamentally, the gradual normalisation of far-right ideas themselves. Voter attitudes toward immigration and other core far-right themes have not shifted dramatically over time, but these issues have become far more decisive in how people vote. Media coverage and mainstream parties embracing far-right framing have legitimised views once considered beyond the pale. As one Austrian-Hungarian political scientist observed, far-right politics and policies now dominate the centre of debate regardless of whether far-right parties hold office. There is no cordon around their ideas.

Sweden holds legislative elections next weekend. France faces a presidential ballot in spring. Italy, Spain, and Poland will hold key races later in the year. Far-right parties are polling strongly in all of them. Europe's mainstream leaders have begun speaking of a grave moment for the continent. Whether that moment represents a temporary surge or a durable realignment remains unclear—but the numbers suggest the centre's long dominance has genuinely ended.