Germany’s political “firewall” against the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has come under growing popular pressure, with polling published on August 6, 2026 showing that a majority of Germans are now open to some form of political cooperation between the AfD and the established parties.
The shift could have significant consequences for Germany’s political system. The AfD and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) together have in recent years attracted around half of the German electorate, potentially giving them the numbers to form a strong centre-right coalition. Yet they have never governed together because the CDU/CSU has maintained a strict firewall against cooperation with the AfD.
The latest figures concern not electoral support, but Germans’ attitude towards cooperation with the AfD. The ARD-DeutschlandTrend, carried out by Infratest dimap between August 3 and August 5, found that 59 per cent could envisage cooperation with the AfD, while 37 per cent rejected it outright. Among those open to cooperation, 32 per cent favoured decisions being made on a case-by-case basis, while 27 per cent said cooperation should actively be sought.
This does not mean that 59 per cent of Germans support an AfD-led government. It does, though, indicate that a clear majority no longer supports an unconditional refusal to work with the party.
The term Brandmauer, literally “firewall”, describes the commitment by Germany’s established parties to keep the AfD out of government and to avoid political cooperation with it. The principle is particularly important for the CDU/CSU, whose leadership has repeatedly ruled out coalitions with the AfD at both federal and State level. A CDU party conference resolution bars coalitions and similar forms of cooperation.
Critics argue that the Brandmauer has gone beyond a legitimate political refusal to form coalitions and has become a form of democratic exclusion, effectively treating millions of AfD voters as politically untouchable. They point, among other things, to the repeated rejection of AfD candidates for senior parliamentary positions and to the exclusion of the party-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation from State funding available to other political foundations, which a 2023 law ties to a foundation standing by the free democratic basic order.
The controversy is compounded by the fact that the AfD is monitored by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). This is not a criminal investigation: the BfV’s mandate is to monitor activities and organisations suspected of threatening Germany’s free democratic basic order.
The BfV reclassified the party as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organisation on May 2, 2025, then suspended that step pending an AfD legal challenge. On February 26, 2026 the administrative court in Cologne barred the agency from applying or publicising the designation until the main proceedings end, leaving the AfD a “suspected case”, a status that still permits surveillance.
The BfV is controlled by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Critics argue that this institutional relationship creates a potential conflict of interest: a government ministry oversees an intelligence agency monitoring one of the country’s principal opposition parties. They contend that giving the domestic intelligence services a role in monitoring a major elected party can become a political instrument for weakening an opponent.
The electoral arithmetic adds another dimension to the debate. Recent nationwide polls confirm that the AfD is clearly ahead of the CDU/CSU, with the party establishing itself as Germany’s strongest political force. An INSA poll for Bild am Sonntag, published on July 18, 2026, put the AfD at 29 per cent, compared with 21 per cent for the CDU/CSU. An ARD-DeutschlandTrend published in July similarly placed the AfD at 27 per cent, five points ahead of the CDU/CSU at 22 per cent. The August edition put the AfD on 28 per cent and the CDU/CSU on 21 per cent, the widest gap that poll has recorded between the two. The figures represent a reversal of the February 2025 federal election, when the CDU/CSU won 28.5 per cent and the AfD 20.8 per cent.
The pattern is significant because it shows not simply that the AfD is growing, but that the CDU/CSU is losing ground at the same time. The AfD has moved from being a major opposition force to becoming the strongest party in national polling, while the traditional centre-right party has fallen well below its previous electoral strength.
For critics of the Brandmauer, the CDU/CSU is increasingly paying a political price for ruling out cooperation with the AfD. Unable or unwilling to work with the strongest party on its right, the CDU/CSU has instead had to rely on cooperation with parties further to the left, most notably the Social Democrats, in order to govern.
The logic is straightforward: if the CDU refuses to cooperate with the AfD regardless of its electoral strength, voters who want a stronger centre-right government may increasingly see the AfD as the only credible alternative. Rather than bringing conservative voters back to the CDU, the firewall could therefore be contributing to the opposite outcome.
The next test comes in September. Saxony-Anhalt, in eastern Germany, votes on September 6 and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on September 20, the same day as Berlin. An Infratest dimap poll published on July 30 put the AfD on 42 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt against 22 per cent for the CDU.
