In the northwestern German state of Lower Saxony, Sunday's local elections offered a window into a democracy in motion — familiar parties holding ground while losing footing, and a far-right force tripling its share of the vote in territory where it once barely registered. The CDU finished first with 27.2 percent, but the more consequential story may be the AfD's rise from 5.1 to 15.9 percent, a surge that challenges the long-held assumption that Germany's far-right surge was an eastern phenomenon. With Mecklenburg-Vorpommern voting next, the question before the German public is whether this i