AfD Saxony-Anhalt has to interrupt party congress due to bomb threat

The corona virus is rampant in Germany and the AfD Saxony-Anhalt is holding its party conference amid the shutdown. A bomb threat creates a forced breakout.

+++ 16.59 pm: the AfD Saxony-Anhalt has his party conference list for the state elections in Magdeburg on Saturday afternoon (December 19, 2020) due to a Bomb threat disrupted. The roughly 400 AfD members left the showroom around 3pm after being asked to do so. A police spokesman confirmed the receipt of a bomb threat. Steps are now being taken to secure the situation, he said. Among other things, an explosives search dog was requested. The time it would take to search for a possible bomb was initially open.

AfD Saxony-Anhalt wants to stop Saturday and Sunday despite strict contact restrictions Corona-Pandemie Build your lists of candidates for state and federal elections. The country’s crown rules allow such electoral events. Strict conditions apply, such as a Mask requirement over the place. Before the interruption, the leader of the parliamentary group in the Magdeburg state parliament, Oliver Kirchner, was chosen as the main candidate for the state elections on June 6, 2021.

AfD party conference amid crown lockdown: hundreds of members gather in Magdeburg

Update for Sunday, December 19, 2020, 1:15 pm: Crown-Lockdown no, contact restrictions here: the alternative for Germany (AfD) sticks to his two-day party conference in Magdeburg. Up to 600 members will travel to the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt.

State authorities had the AfD They issued strict hygiene requirements if they really want to hold the meeting in Magdeburg as a party presence conference despite the closure. National Manager Martin Reichardt asked those present at the beginning of the event to constantly wear a mask. According to information from the dpa, another member of the party was accepted for his criticism. Party congress In the middle of Crown-Krise booed.

Strongest AfD or second strongest force in Corona strongholds

First report of December 19, 2020: The Free State of Saxony is currently considered the Corona-Hochburg nationwide. The number of new infections each day would increase “very clearly”, according to the information page coronavirus.sachsen.de. 102,190 people so far have been positive SARS-CoV-2 tested, in 24 hours, 3412 people were infected in Saxony (as of December 18, 2020). “The incidence value for the Free State is 415 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days,” the site continues.

It is particularly high Corona incidence in the district of Bautzen with 668.2, followed by the district of Görlitz with 616.1, then Saxon Switzerland-Eastern Ore Mountains (589.6), Zwickau (562.9) and Meißen with a value of 528.3. For comparison: the highest Incidence in Hesse is 315.6 (Odenwaldkreis, as of December 18, 2020).

But next to Crown is Saxony An AfD stronghold was also looked at nationally: in state elections, the party achieved the second-highest number of votes behind the CDU with 27.5 percent. If you go into more detail, it turns out that 33.9 percent of voters in Bautzen: within the AfD They have chosen. Therefore, it is the most powerful force that exists. In Görlitz the AfD With 37.8 percent of the votes, it became the second strongest party, in Saxon Switzerland, however, it is in the first position with 35 percent. In Zwickau it seems similar (21.85 percent and therefore just behind the CDU), in Meißen, on the other hand, the majority of people voted in 2019 AfD.

There is no causation, but the correlation between AfD and Corona is surprising

Is it a coincidence that where the AfD is strongly represented and apparently has a decisive influence on the mood in society, the number of Corona infections are they way above the national average? After all, the AfD recently demonstrated at its federal party conference what it thinks, for example, of the mask requirement, which it wanted to avoid by filing a lawsuit.

In general, some of the party greats, including Björn Höcke, asked to participate in the so-called “lateral thinkers” demonstrations and thus implicitly resist. Crown measurements. The pioneering role of the party could lead to Anti-crown measures reported as not relevant, much more disturbing, rejected.

Matthias quent, Director of the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society, recently published an analysis that points to a link between a Crown-Infection and choice of AfD closes. Quent wants to have “recalculated”, as he writes on Twitter.

In fact, there are abnormalities among those susceptible to corona AfD regionBut, as he emphasizes, you cannot test a potentially existing connection: “MIGHT is important. Individual cases say nothing about systematic relationships. AND: Correlations are NOT causalities. High AfD results and high incidence values ​​could exist at the same time without one influencing the other, ”von Quent says on Twitter.

In plain English, it could also be a pure coincidence. However, the correlations are “statistically strong and significant.” The “results of the regression analyzes” showed a clear connection between the incidence of the crown and the result of the federal elections of the AfD 2017 at the district level. This applies to the east and, with a few exceptions, also to the west of Germany.

In Saxony However, this connection occurs particularly strongly and therefore cannot be “random individual cases”. However, Quent emphasizes again that the cause of the connection is unclear and cannot be proven to be causal. However, the thesis in the room is that the political objectives of the AfD less on social cohesion as a whole, because it is intended to counteract collectively applied state measures, and that this contributes to an increase in the infection curve due to inadequate anti-crown protection.

AfD MPs infected with corona virus

Meanwhile, it became known that of the 89 AfD members of the Bundestag, four can be shown to have had the Coronavirus are infected. However, the vice president of the parliamentary group Tino Chrupalla ruled out a connection with the party’s federal conference in Kalkar at the end of November. (Katja Thorwarth)