President Donald Trump traveled to Iowa on Thursday, looking to energize his base as he touts a financial-support plan to reassure farmers, a key constituency that has been hit hard by rising prices.
It’s another campaign trip to a reliably red state that has become surprisingly competitive. Trump won Iowa three times — carrying it by 13 points in 2024 — but this year several Republicans are in tight races.
Returning to Iowa for the first time in nearly 10 months, Trump campaigned, in part, for Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate hopeful who is running to fill retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s seat. Hinson and her Democratic rival, state Rep. Josh Turek, are almost neck and neck in polling averages from MS NOW/FiftyPlusOne.
“There are a number of Senate seats in play that we did not expect to be in play,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “[Trump’s] record and his approach are likely to appeal much more to members of his base than they are to independent or swing voters.”
In Sioux City, Trump sought to appease Americans hurting from high fuel prices by announcing that his administration is using the Defense Production Act to release $150 million to increase U.S. refining capacity to produce more diesel and gas.
Trump spent the first few minutes of the rally railing against familiar political targets he has repeatedly invoked to rile up supporters at recent campaign stops, including Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. Speaking to Iowans, Trump claimed without providing evidence that Omar used a different name to get elected and sworn into Congress, a claim the congresswoman’s spokesperson has publicly denied.
As the president attacked Omar and argued she should resign, his supporters chanted, “Lock her up.”
The president also spoke at length about a controversial attack ad by Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy targeting his rival, Democrat Amy Acton. The ad features Acton’s estranged mother saying her daughter lied about being sexually assaulted by her stepfather. Trump told supporters that he asked Ramaswamy to keep running the ad and to “look upstairs and say thank you, God, very much.”
And Trump, who frequently talks about running again in 2028 — despite the Constitution’s two-term limit — again bragged he would beat any opponent if he ran, but acknowledged that, after studying the law, he has learned that there was “not a lot of wiggle room” to allow him to seek another term.
“I think I have the right to run again because they cheated,” Trump said, repeating repeating his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Thursday’s rally at Sioux Gateway Airport is the first of at least two planned visits to Iowa by the president in the final stretch of the midterms. The president’s campaign blitz in typically Republican strongholds reflects shifts in the political landscape in a midterm that initially favored the GOP.
“The problem right now is that people perceive that the economy is not better, and inflation has not only not come down, but it’s higher,” Ayres said.
A GOP strategist familiar with Republicans’ thinking in the midterms, granted anonymity to speak freely about internal strategies, told MS NOW the president’s visits to some of the reddest districts in states like Iowa in the final days of the campaign are part of a deliberate strategy to maximize turnout by loyal Trump voters in key races.
“Specifically, the 4th District, where we’re deploying him, is the heart of the base, the heart of Republican support,” the strategist said. “If we can churn out our base voters in that area, Democrats’ path to winning the state just shrinks dramatically.”
Seeking to address the financial hardships hitting major agricultural states like Iowa, the Trump administration has announced an $8 billion relief package for farmers and construction plans for a $15 billion steel plant in the state. The president himself has also touted new foreign trade deals to export American farm products and other efforts to boost farmers and ranchers.
But some farmers MS NOW spoke to say Trump’s trade deals have made little impact on their businesses as their operating costs have increased from rising diesel and fertilizer prices. And the president’s announcement that he would lower tariffs on ground beef from Argentina earlier this year came as a blow to the state’s cattle industry, with both Hinson and Turek calling the policy a bad idea.
Craig Moss, a fifth-generation cattle and hog farmer from Hull, about 50 miles north of Sioux City, told MS NOW the volatile cattle market had been “rough” in the past year, in part because of the president’s lifting of tariffs on Argentine ground beef.
“Trump makes a trade deal with Argentina, and then when he’s questioned about it by reporters, he says, ‘You don’t know anything about what’s going on over there,’” Moss said. “Well, sir, you don’t know anything about the cattle market.”
Moss said the current diesel price “kind of stinks,” adding that the ongoing Iran war was to blame. Still, Moss, who voted for Trump in the past, said he agreed with the president on most issues and did not regret voting for him before.
Julius Schaaf, a corn-and-soybean farmer of more than 40 years based in Fremont County, voted against Trump in past elections and said the current volatility in the farming industry was because of Trump’s trade policies. Schaaf criticized the administration as a “rude and difficult” trading partner.
“A lot of the people that supported him were farmers that have a lot of equity in their property, and they can weather a storm for a while,” Schaaf said. “But you talk to the young guys that are just getting started and trying to buy inputs and inputs have gone through the roof — they’re the ones that are really struggling.”
Vice President JD Vance addressed some of those concerns last month at a rally in the state, telling supporters that the Trump administration’s trade and tax policies have directly benefited farmers and blue-collar workers. He has also sought to show understanding of economic realities, acknowledging the high cost of gas and telling voters “we’re working on it.” Trump, for his part, has at times downplayed those concerns, calling the focus on affordability a “hoax” and insisting that prices would plummet once the Iran war ends.
Many Iowans across the political spectrum whom MS NOW spoke with agreed that their No. 1 concern was the cost of living. And while Trump’s performance got mixed reviews, they still had not decided how they would vote in the Senate and House races.
Tiffany, an Iowa voter who backed Trump in 2024, plans to vote in the midterm races but said she is currently undecided. Her top issue: the cost of living, she said, because “prices keep going up.”
“If you can’t afford to put gas in your car, how can you go to work to make money to put a roof over your head to put food on your table?” said Tiffany, who asked to go by her first name only. “You can only stretch your penny and your dollars so far until you can’t stretch it anymore.”
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The Brazilian presidential election has become an arena for modern, dirty digital tactics. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, representing the Liberal Party (PL), has centered his campaign strategy around coordinated digital reach and automated content production.
RELATED: UN Experts Raise Concerns Over Meta’s Handling of Political Expression During Brazil Elections
Rather than working as a traditional political campaign of physical rallies, the operation relies heavily on digital distribution infrastructure across social media platforms.
Flávio’s strategy operates through two main mechanisms. First, the campaign uses synthetic consensus tools, automated social media accounts, AI image generation, and digital avatars to simulate organic public backing.
Second, the campaign benefits from algorithmic distribution asymmetries on digital platforms, which amplify far-right material while placing system restrictions on competing political content.
Collected evidence by independent researchers, journalism networks, and electoral authorities indicates that systemic digital manipulation and platform-level infrastructure played a decisive role in shaping voter perception and electoral engagement in Brazil.
A core component of Flávio Bolsonaro’s digital strategy involves the commercial purchase of automated networks designed to manufacture artificial public support.
An investigation by The Intercept Brazil revealed that Flávio Bolsonaro paid Elytron, a cybersecurity firm, to carry out data collection and voter identification to spread rumors and create fake accounts.
These automated tools operate primarily across WhatsApp, Instagram, and X, generating synchronized posts and artificial engagement to bypass standard organic distribution patterns.
This infrastructure uses astroturfing techniques to alter online public discourse. By deploying thousands of automated accounts programmed to post identical messaging scripts, the campaign artificially inflates engagement metrics, pushes specific political hashtags into regional trending lists, and floods comment sections on public news pages.
This creates a false impression of widespread popular momentum, designed to sway undecided voters through perceived consensus.
Technical evaluations submitted during electoral court proceedings reveal the scope of these automated operations. Data presented to electoral monitors shows coordinated account clusters posting at frequencies humanly impossible without software automation.
🚨 BREAKING: Flávio Bolsonaro paid R$600,000 to a company that offered AI to manipulate elections, according to Intercept Brasil. pic.twitter.com/eFcRp74vNw
— Pop Core (@TheePopCore) October 16, 2026
Various social organizations and media outlets have denounced the deployment of AI image and video generation tools as another facet of Flávio Bolsonaro’s digital strategy.
A prominent example occurred during campaign launch events, where the campaign broadcast an AI-generated digital avatar of former president Jair Bolsonaro endorsing his son’s candidacy. This technique allowed the campaign to maintain the political presence of the former president Bolsonaro in public events despite judicial rulings restricting his direct participation in political activities.
In addition, the campaign used AI tools to manipulate visual documentation of campaign gatherings. Documented instances show event photography processed through image generation models to alter crowd compositions.
These AI modifications included scaling up crowd sizes to exaggerate physical attendance and digitally swapping male attendees with female faces. The primary objective of this demographic engineering was to simulate broader support among female voters, a demographic group where polling data consistently showed lower support for the candidate.
An investigation by a Brazilian media outlet identified more than 50 TikTok videos altered using AI, specifically on-the-street interviews in which subjects claimed they would vote for Flávio Bolsonaro. These videos garnered over 7 million views, yet in only 18% of them did the platform indicate that the individuals featured were AI-generated.
While Brazilian law prohibits the use of AI-generated videos in political campaigns, it is difficult to determine when such content is created by third parties with no direct affiliation to the campaigns.
Due to a lack of female supporters, Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro has resorted to using AI to transform middle-aged men into attractive young women.
— Vatnik Soup (@vatniksoup) October 20, 2026
This AI-generated creation has been dubbed the "Bolsonaro Bombshell." pic.twitter.com/ap1ecKou9K
Flávio Bolsonaro’s public communications strategy relies heavily on coordinated attack campaigns directed against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Workers’ Party (PT).
The Flávio campaign’s public messaging routinely utilizes sensationalist allegations and targeted attacks. Online networks affiliated with the campaign circulate manufactured claims regarding public safety, economic stability, and social values, framing the current administration in terms of moral crisis.
On Sunday the 18th, the public debate between the two candidates took place, and Flávio Bolsonaro spent most of his time attacking Lula during his turns to speak.
Throughout the debate, Flávio was sarcastic and mocking toward President Lula; he attempted to intimidate him physically, to which Lula responded by moving away, stating that he did not want to be near either Flávio or the Bolsonaro family.
Furthermore, when the discussion turned to public safety, Flávio claimed that Lula is the preferred candidate of organized crime, pointing out that Lula received a large number of votes from within the country’s prisons. Lula replied, “I want 100% of them to vote for me -even your father,” a reference to the fact that Jair Bolsonaro is currently incarcerated.
This aggressive messaging strategy directly impacts the broader political environment. By flooding public discourse with inflammatory claims, the campaign creates heightened polarization, distracts from substantive legislative evaluations, and systematically delegitimizes established democratic processes and electoral monitoring bodies.
Hundreds of Brazilians protested outside Meta’s São Paulo offices, accusing the technology giant of limiting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign reach while boosting far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, just six days before the presidential runoff. The demonstration… pic.twitter.com/KRAxExFjMO
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) October 20, 2026
The Brazilian presidential race was shaped by asymmetries within Meta’s platforms, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook.
Filings submitted to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE, in Spanish) by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s legal team documented clear disparities in how content from both campaigns was handled by the different platforms.
A primary issue involved Meta’s generative AI features. When users requested campaign materials incorporating Lula’s official ballot number, 13, the system repeatedly rejected the prompts, citing political content restrictions. Conversely, identical requests containing Flávio Bolsonaro’s candidate number, 22, were routinely processed, generating promotional material for the far-right campaign.
In other instances, the AI tool inserted Bolsonaro’s electoral number into completely unrelated image requests. Following formal complaints, the Superior Electoral Court ordered Meta to ensure equal treatment. Meta attributed these outcomes to technical errors and implemented broad restrictions on political image generation.
Internal Meta communications revealed that technical errors caused Lula’s official Instagram profile to be excluded from platform search results and recommendation engines, while Flávio Bolsonaro’s profile remained fully discoverable and actively recommended to users. Furthermore, internal technical escalations confirmed that temporary account restrictions had hindered the reach of Lula’s messaging assets.
WHO'S THE REAL THIEF? LULA CHALLENGES BOLSONARO TO SHOW RECORDS
— Sovereign Media (@sov_media) October 21, 2026
Ahead of Brazil’s presidential election, Brazilian President Lula da Silva publicly challenged rival Flávio Bolsonaro to open his bank accounts, release his phone records, and let the Brazilian people decide who… pic.twitter.com/U6Ge0yOV6A
The execution of Flávio Bolsonaro’s digital presidential campaign illustrates the evolving mechanics of far-right electoral operations.
By combining commercial bot procurement, generative AI deepfakes, coordinated public attacks, and platform-level algorithmic advantages, the campaign constructed a heavily synthetic media environment designed to influence voter perception.
These developments underscore the limitations of existing legal and regulatory frameworks in addressing digital campaign manipulation. While judicial interventions by the Superior Electoral Court forced technical corrections, reactive oversight remains insufficient to counteract real-time automated suppression and algorithmic imbalance.
Protecting democratic processes requires structural regulatory reform, including mandatory algorithmic transparency, strict auditing of generative AI systems, and clear accountability standards for global technology corporations operating within national borders.
Exposing the mechanics of digital manipulation through independent research and data-driven journalism remains essential to safeguarding electoral integrity against automated distortion and platform bias.
Sources: Brasil de Fato – Agência Brasil – Gov.br – O Globo – Folha de S.Paulo – O Estado de S.Paulo – El País – CNN Brasil – EFE – Instituto Tricontinental – La Base América Latina – Diario Red – The Intercept – El Salto
The series continues as we report on developments following April’s historic election and on the steps taken since then by the Tisza government. This week, we cover the following topics:
Last Friday (9 October), prime minister Péter Magyar and Dávid Vitézy, minister for transport and investments, announced that the state was suspending implementation of one of Hungary’s largest rail projects – the Budapest southern circular railway, and will launch a new public procurement procedure.
The works had been carried out by V-Híd, the most profitable company of Lőrinc Mészáros, who became Hungary’s richest man during Viktor Orbán’s premiership.
However, the European Court of Auditors uncovered serious public-procurement irregularities: V-Híd may have colluded with the company that drafted the project plans and thus already possessed information at the time of the tender that its competitors did not have. Because of this, the European Court of Auditors would withdraw EU funding from the project.
The Hungarian government does not want to forfeit the EU money and make Hungarian taxpayers foot the bill for the costs of the project, which is why it is terminating the contract with Mészáros’s company and launching a new tender.
The Hungarian state had already taken away from Mészáros the right to operate a motorway section, and later also terminated the 35-year motorway concession.
Previously, one of his food-industry companies had EU funding already granted to it withdrawn, while his energy company was excluded from a call for proposals financed from the repatriated RRF funds.
On Monday (12 October), president András Baka nominated a former chief prosecutor, Péter Fejes, for the post of chief prosecutor. His first nominee, Zoltán Szathmáry, was not voted through by the Tisza group in parliament after it emerged that his brother was implicated in the so-called gold convoy case, in which a Ukrainian cash shipment was stopped and confiscated by the Hungarian authorities.
Fejes was dismissed in 2012 from his position as chief prosecutor of Vas county by Péter Polt, the chief prosecutor serving the Orbán system, citing loss of confidence. Since then he has continued to work within the prosecution service and as a university lecturer, and he has no party affiliation. For the time being neither prime minister Magyar nor the Tisza group has stated whether they support Fejes’s nomination.
Since the change of government, another former chief prosecutor, Pál Fürcht, has frequently spoken to the media. Among other things, he has claimed that the gold convoy case was created for political purposes, and that the authorities raided the Ukrainian cash couriers on Orbán’s orders.
On Sunday (11 October), Magyar sharply criticised Fürcht in a Facebook post, reproaching him for having been a servant of the system himself. According to Magyar, Fürcht constructed a criminal case, on political orders, out of the notorious nightclub altercation for which the prime minister is currently under investigation on charges of theft.
It was likewise Fürcht who left former propaganda minister Antal Rogán out of the corruption case known as the Völner–Schadl affair.
In response to Magyar’s criticism, Fürcht said he was ready to make an official statement before any authority. In parliament on Monday, the prime minister was already referring to the former chief prosecutor as a future witness.
Child protection was one of the most important topics of the campaign and played a major role in Orbán’s downfall. Magyar kept the issue on the agenda even after his government took office; most recently, last Thursday, the prime minister and the state secretary responsible for the field, Szilvia Gyurkó, presented the report on the children’s home in Bicske.
This home had been run by a director who was decorated by Orbán and later convicted of paedophile crimes, together with his deputy, who helped cover up the abuses. The presidential pardon granted to the deputy shook the Orbán government and helped lead to its collapse.
On Tuesday (13 October), parliament adopted an amendment to the child-protection law, which takes a tougher stance against media content accessible to minors that propagates sexual violence, manipulation and exploitation, and would speed up the placement of babies abandoned in hospital.
The amendment removed those homophobic passages that the Orbán government forced into law in 2021, and which the Court of Justice of the European Union also ruled to be contrary to EU law.
Fidesz, the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) and the far-right Mi Hazánk did not vote for the amendment; Magyar called this a disgrace.
On Tuesday, András Tótth, state secretary for energy at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy and minister István Kapitány’s most important aide, unexpectedly resigned.
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The Conservatives have jumped three points in the latest poll following Kemi Badenoch's conference tax pledges, leapfrogging Reform and coming within a point of Labour as Burnham sees his lead slip by three points.
The post Badenoch Bounce: Tories Leapfrog Reform in Latest Poll to Move Within a Point of Labour appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Amid renewed speculation about an early General Election, now is the time to look at whom to put money on as the next party leaders, says Mark Littlewood in his latest Political Betting column for the Daily Sceptic.
The post Who Will the Next Party Leaders Be? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The Tories, Reform and Restore can't stand each other, but letting the Left win would be daft, argues Nick Rendell. Could fed-up swing voters force the Right's warring tribes to stop squabbling and get their act together?
The post Party Leaders and Daily Sceptic Readers Hate the Idea – But Will Swing Voters Force the Right to Unite? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Zack Polanski is on the brink of the sack as Greens leader today after being humiliatingly beaten in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, trailing more than 3,000 votes behind Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali.
The post Humiliated Polanski on Brink of the Sack After Losing By-Election as He Faces “Zionism is Racism” Backlash appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
More than a year ago, we launched our Hungary Briefing, a weekly round-up of the election campaign. Since the historic vote in April to remove Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government, the series has followed the new Tisza administration and its first moves in office. This week’s topics:
How Viktor Orbán used Lőrinc Mészáros.
The investigative outlet Direkt36 revealed important details about the links between Lőrinc Mészáros’s companies and Orbán-era propaganda in a new series of articles. The investigators obtained internal documents from a company called V-Híd, which showed that the firm belonging to the Mészáros portfolio paid out several billion forints between 2022 and 2026 to influencers in the Megafon network.
The oligarch was not stingy.
V-Híd is one of the most important and most profitable companies in the Mészáros empire, primarily engaged in railway construction. It owes its success almost entirely to the fact that it won huge public procurement contracts under Fidesz governments.
In recent years, V-Híd has become the dominant player in railway construction in Hungary, pushing out its competitors. Enormous dividends have been taken out of the company by the Mészáros clan (most recently, despite weaker results, 10 billion forints, or around €25m).
The Direkt36 article also reveals that Orbán-era propaganda was financed directly from the company’s revenue. Donation contracts were leaked showing that V-Híd regularly sent hundreds of millions of forints as “gifts” to Megafon. In 2024 alone, they sent 3 billion forints (around €7.6m at the time) in support to the influencer network.
The formula was very simple: through public procurement, the government stuffed the Mészáros group’s companies with public money, and part of the revenue generated was channelled to the propaganda machine.
From 2020, Megafon was a key communication channel for Fidesz, where well-known influencers conveyed the party’s messages and huge sums were spent on online advertising.
The money won through public tenders did not only go towards financing propaganda. Direkt36 also uncovered luxury perks V-Híd and other Mészáros companies offered their staff.
Many would envy V-Híd’s team-building events. In 2024, nine employees of the company travelled by private jet to a château in south-western France, at a cost 62 million forints, or about €150,000, including €500 spent on cigars.
According to Direkt36, V-Híd has spent more than 1 billion forints in total – roughly €2.5m – on foreign trips in recent years.
On one trip to Tajikistan, V-Híd paid out €46,000 – the Central Asian country is a popular destination for exotic hunting excursions, and Mészáros also took part in such a hunting tour.
The Mészáros clan were also keen on yachting and spent money on private jets. One private jet linked to the Mészáros family was used at least once by Orbán himself.
Fidesz has tied itself in knots after the arrest of culture minister Balázs Hankó. Hankó is suspected of aggravated breach of fiduciary duty causing particularly significant financial loss, committed in a criminal conspiracy, and the court has placed him in pre-trial detention.
The Hankó case blew up shortly after the elections, when activist Áron Molnár revealed that the National Cultural Fund had disbursed more than 17 billion forints (around €44m) to artists close to Fidesz for the purposes of the party’s campaign.
After a few months of investigation, the authorities reached the former minister, now a member of parliament, who said the allocation of grants had been lawful and that a politically-motivated show trial had been launched against him.
Shortly before he was taken into custody, Hankó told HírTV, a Fidesz-friendly channel, that being a Fidesz member or linked to Fidesz had never been a precondition for receiving NCA funding.
Orbán, however, explained the Hankó case differently in a speech at a closed-door event, from which former state secretary Péter Takács shared a clip. According to Orbán, Hankó was the only culture minister since 2010 who did not give support to the “liberals in Budapest”, and that is why, in his view, he was locked up.
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Labour may be enjoying a Burnham bounce, but Mark Littlewood still thinks the smart option is to bet against the Prime Minister winning the next General Election. He explains why in the Daily Sceptic.
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The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has continued its downward spiral after suffering significant losses in state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday, September 20. In addition to coming second to the progressive Die Linke in the German capital, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party failed to achieve the 5% needed to enter Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s parliament, marking a new low – or, in Merz’s own words – a “disaster.”
The results of the two elections were radically different: in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the largest percentage of votes, echoing, in many ways, the recent outcome in Saxony-Anhalt. In Berlin, Die Linke emerged as the winner, claiming a quarter of the vote after a campaign focusing on housing, the cost of living crisis, and public transport.
Part of the local reports note that while the AfD and Die Linke lie on opposite ends of the political spectrum, both gained ground thanks to the perception that they bring the best chance of breaking with the policies implemented by the government coalition between CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD).
These policies – pursuing extensive cuts to the social and welfare system and attacks on labor rights in order to fund a massive rearmament drive – have completely eroded the support for Merz’s conservatives. Despite this administration’s unprecedented unpopularity, the German Chancellor is showing no sign of changing course, stating after Sunday’s election that “reforms must come.”
Reforms must be implemented, voters in several German states apparently agree with Merz – just not those envisioned by the CDU. Die Linke’s campaign, led by Elif Eralp, offered an alternative list of policy reforms addressing Berlin’s inhabitants’ most pressing concerns. This meant a focus on accessible housing – including a follow-up on the 2021 referendum where voters backed expropriating the property of private real-estate companies with 3,000 or more units in the city.
Five years ago, over one million people supported the referendum’s idea of socializing the housing pool, yet no action was taken by the local administration. Since then, the housing situation has grown worse, leading to widespread frustration. Die Linke’s campaign recognized the general discontent and promised it would not give up on socialization.
“Die Linke’s successful campaign in Berlin was driven by its strong focus on affordable housing and rent control, which resonated deeply with voters facing massively rising living costs,” Kirsten Schubert, a general practitioner active in the party’s local chapter, told BreakThrough News. “The party integrated large-scale door-to-door campaigning strategy, allowing volunteers to connect personally with hundreds of thousands of residents directly at their doorsteps. By those means, strong social media presence and a huge range of community activities, they successfully mobilized a diverse coalition of non-voters, progressive urban youth, and traditional working-class voters.”
Krunoslav Stojaković, a political advisor at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, says that the election result commits not only Die Linke, but also “the social left and all those who care about a more just society” to work towards achieving socialization of housing. “At this point, there can be no going back […] The people of Berlin have given us this mandate.”
“There will be resistance,” he emphasizes. “Potential coalition partners are only tentatively supportive of Die Linke, and some are already making demands against the socialization of those profiting from the housing crisis as a condition for political cooperation.”
The approach adopted in Berlin marked a welcome break from Die Linke’s campaigning in other states. Stojaković pointed out to the portal H-alter that the party’s earlier choices – such as joining coalitions that implemented austerity measures – contributed to a fall in popularity. The recent success offers an opportunity to reclaim lost ground and reshape the party’s approach to fieldwork. But it should not be taken for granted that this will happen.
For now, the party faces talks with potential coalition partners SPD and the Greens. Figures from both parties signaled there are significant misalignments between them and Die Linke. While the SPD does not share the commitment to socialization of housing, the Greens’ Franziska Brantner said the party would not cooperate with “anti-semites from Neukölln.” With this, Brantner indicated that the political mainstream in Germany will persist in pressuring those criticizing Israel – even if this criticism remains timid at best.
On the other hand, left and progressive parties across Europe recognized in Die Linke’s result an important rupture within the predominating context of the far right gaining electoral ground. From Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France to Slovenia’s Levica, reactions emphasized the significance of shaping grounded and unequivocally left programs. “Politics begins with the daily problems of millions of people,” wrote Peter Mertens, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA). “It is not just about talking about tenants and workers, but about organizing them so they can impose change themselves.”
This article was updated on Wednesday, September 23, to incorporate comments from Kirsten Schubert.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) scored a resounding and historic win in Saxony-Anhalt, but when specific data points are examined, the victory is even more remarkable.
Here are four key data points from the election that show the AfD, which scored approximately 43.8 percent of the vote, has much to celebrate regardless of whether it actually manages to gain control of the state.
Perhaps the most positive aspect of the election for the AfD is that the tremendous victory was achieved with a record high level of voter participation of 77.8 percent. In essence, more democracy equaled more votes for the AfD, according to calculations from the Infratest dimap. The firm pointed out that the AfD won 170,000 voters who stayed home during the last election in 2021, which is 10 percent of Saxony-Anhalt’s roughly 1.7 million eligible voters.
This means that the AfD’s total voting pool was made up of approximately 30 to 35 percent non-voters.
For those disillusioned by politics, the AfD’s program is drawing them back into participating in democracy. The country’s media should be celebrating this result in theory, but in reality, they would perhaps prefer that these voters simply stayed home, disillusioned and downtrodden.
The AfD’s results show there might be futrher room for improvement. Approximately 65 percent of the AfD’s voters reported facing financial issues. As the German economy continues to falter, the pool of potential voters the AfD can tap into is likely to expand in other states.
It is important to note that just because many of these voters are facing financial difficulties does not necessarily mean they are unemployed. In fact, AfD won 61 percent of all blue-collar voters who actually voted. However, many of these often lower-income workers may also be struggling financially in a system that often rewards not working at all.
Some see the AfD’s results as a template.
“65% of AfD voters in Saxony-Anhalt reported facing financial struggles. Turns out that when you correctly link mass immigration to the decline in job security, homeownership, accessible healthcare, quality education, decent wages, and almost every other quality of life indicator for existing residents, they respond accordingly at the ballot box,” wrote Gabe Guidarini, the chief of staff for the Ohio Young Republicans wrote. Although an American, his post underlines that the AfD election results are being watched by the right-wing across the world, especially when they offer a clear blueprint for victory.
65% of AfD voters in Saxony-Anhalt reported facing financial struggles.
— Gabe Guidarini (@GabeGuidarini) September 6, 2026
Turns out that when you correctly link mass immigration to the decline in job security, homeownership, accessible healthcare, quality education, decent wages, and almost every other quality of life indicator… pic.twitter.com/g0HJLtTs79
The tired narrative of the left, which depicts right-wing parties only garnering support from “old White males,” was once again smashed by the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD won the youth by overwhelming numbers, reaching 42 percent of voters aged 18–24 vote and 44 percent of voters aged 25–40.
Martin Sellner, CEO of the Remigration Institute, celebrated the results, writing: “The kids are all right. The German youth are increasingly patriotic and reject ‘German guilt,’ replacement migration, trans ideology, and cultural Marxism.”
The kids are all right.
— Martin Sellner (@MartinSellner_) September 6, 2026
The German youth are increasingly patriotic and reject "German guilt", replacement migration, trans ideology, and cultural Marxism altogether. pic.twitter.com/LhcM3le7QX
In fact, it was the oldest voters that actually cost the AfD an absolute majority, with only 31 percent of voters 70 and older backing the party. Similar figures have been consistently found across Germany, with older voters turning to the establishment parties while young and middle-aged voters turning to the AfD.
While the AfD can celebrate its support among younger voters, the combined weight of the older voting population means the AfD will have to make inroads with these voters or continue to fail to reach a position of power at the state and federal level.
The story of Saxony-Anhalt cannot be told without the collapse of the Christian Democrats (CDU). The party halved its support since the last election, dropping to 17.2 percent.
Political scientist Petra Dobner was asked if Chancellor Friedrich Merz will now resign. She responded: “That may also depend on how the next elections turn out. So maybe he can survive Saxony-Anhalt, but if Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin show similar results, then I really don’t see a future for Merz.”
Notably, Merz famously said in 2018 that the CDU can cut the AfD’s support in half.
“We can achieve up to 40% again and halve the AfD. That’s possible! But we ourselves must create the conditions for it. That’s our task,” he said.
Since then, Merz has managed to cut the CDU’s support in half in Saxony-Anhalt and double the AfD’s support.
The post 4 reasons why the AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt is so incredible appeared first on Remix News.
Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court heard an appeal from death row inmate Terry Pitchford, who was denied relief by the Mississippi Supreme Court after his attorneys claimed Black people were illegally struck from his jury. Investigative reporter Hannah McAlilly delves into the case, and into the wider problem of racial prejudice in the selection of juries in Mississippi:
A prosecutor struck a Black woman for having “red dyed hair” and in another, a prosecutor struck a Black man because he had “a ponytail, a sort of strange hair design.” That prosecutor told the judge he was concerned the juror might identify too closely with the defendant, who also was of a similar age. “Both have unusual hair styles,” the prosecutor said.
Prosecutors struck Black jurors who, they said, seemed angry, irritated or inattentive. A Black woman was struck because the prosecutor didn’t like her “vibe.” Another, who worked a night shift before showing up to jury selection, was struck for being “fidgety” and looking “angry.” Another was struck because she “frowned a lot.”
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