Before the state elections: What the working class thinks

The interview almost led to a marital dispute. “The lying press doesn't help,” the gray-haired man shouts when the taz reporter speaks to his wife in downtown Magdeburg. He grabs the pretty blonde's wrist and tries to drag her further. “I still decide who I talk to,” she fires back.

Then she breaks away, turns on her heel and turns to the reporter. "So, what do you want to know? I'm well informed," she begins the conversation. The man stalks away. “I will vote for AfD,” she explains in the second sentence. She only comments on the fact that the AfD could dismantle democracy: “Everyone has their flaws.”

As much as the victory of the right-wing extremists on Sunday in Saxony-Anhalt is to be feared, many actors in the region have shown that giving up is not an option. And: After the election is always before the election, for example the 2029 federal election. The other parties have no choice but to try to win back votes. They lost particularly many in the working class. But so far only a minority of them, 30 percent, have chosen the right-wing extremist party - although the bourgeois features section sometimes gives a different impression.

In addition to wage earners, for example in industry, this also includes people in the service sector, the self-employed and the unemployed. Among other things, they are among the lowest earners in society and comprise approximately 16 million people. In the last federal election, the AfD performed 9 percentage points better among the workforce than among the population as a whole. What moves them?

"Wiktor, are you okay? Lunch or watt?" the locksmith shouts across the yard. “Colleague from Kazakhstan, good man,” he says to the reporter – as if to prove that he has nothing against foreigners. The 43-year-old works for a yacht charter company in the northwest of Rügen.

It is possible that he will vote for the AfD again in the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on September 20th. He parrots right-wing fake news - for example, that the primary school in the neighboring town has been closed, even though it is being renovated with millions of euros. Anti-Semitic vibes also come through when he criticizes “the greed of certain people” who, in his view, are “not coincidentally rich.” For him, family includes father, mother and child.

His family does not appear to be economically behind: he owns several cars and his daughter has a horse. The “great dissatisfaction” that Mr. D. feels seems to have been triggered by right-wing propaganda. “I’ll still vote and won’t say ‘Sieg Heil!’ like others here,” he emphasizes.

And lo and behold, when it comes to migration, he represents humane attitudes: “People who need protection should get it.” He calls the ban on work for refugees “completely stupid”, but he thinks the border controls are fine. Migrants could join his music club “if they behave”. After this half-sentence, which one could consider to be a racist suggestion, an unexpected feminist statement follows: “Young men are always so full of testosterone, regardless of whether they are German or not.”

Unlike the locksmith, a bartender has an academic degree. The woman in her mid-thirties works full time in a pub near the Magdeburg train station and tells the taz: “I can’t hear it anymore.” As an Austrian, she is “glad when the whole circus is over on Sunday.”

If she were allowed to vote, she would “probably not vote for such an extreme party”. The democratic parties could win votes from people like this waitress without having to poach them from the AfD - if they gave them the right to vote.

Another man could, but doesn't want to. “I don’t believe a single politician anymore,” says the deposit collector in Magdeburg, visibly surprised that the reporter spoke to him. He looks up from a trash can he was poking through. Half-full plastic bags dangle from his red bike.

The slight man with the long beard, who lives on 300 euros a month, does not want to give his name. “I read a lot of newspapers – every newspaper I can find,” he explains. “I still know socialism, that was much better, i.e. the social achievements,” he says with a smile. “Merz is a lying chancellor and the AfD are Nazis.”

He is a leftist. But he doesn't vote for the Left Party either. “It’s too weak to implement anything anyway,” he sums up. Is there a political measure that he would find useful? “If they increase the deposit prices.”

The AfD also has “no problems” with the untrained cashier in Magdeburg, assures the woman in her mid-fifties with the short purple haircut and long fingernails. “Then it’s better to have the garden party,” she says. “Hitler again,” she doesn’t feel like that. But she doesn’t like the fact that “many foreigners” live in her area. Racism is also possible without voting for the AfD.

As different as the 20 or so people the taz spoke to may be, they have one thing in common: In addition to all the inhumane attitudes, they all also represent demands that democratic parties could follow.

A person may be completely stuck in the right-wing extremist propaganda tunnel on one topic, but on another they argue with facts again. None of these people who were approached by chance belonged to the dregs of convinced neo-Nazis who can no longer be converted. And neither are those AfD voters who are driven by an unconscious longing for destruction.

Even the hairdresser from Magdeburg, who sounds so irritated throughout the entire conversation as if she were calling the police about noise pollution at night, has a trace of reason. And in terms of content, there clearly seems to be more overlap with the left than with the AfD: “I've worked a lot, I always confessed that I can't actually do it anymore,” she criticizes the planned increase in the retirement age.

The high prices also bother her. “Hardly any of my customers can afford a pair of panties or chocolate,” she says. The social-chauvinist AfD is unlikely to improve their situation, on the contrary. In order to win her back, other parties should “make sure that I can go to the doctor and get a turn,” she complains.

And although she is currently "very focused on the AfD," she doesn't seem to fully identify with the party: "I'll give them a chance now. If they mess up, they'll have to resign."