The party finds itself under increased pressure after it has been reported that AfD politicians have participated in a meeting discussing the expulsion of millions of migrants, possibly by revoking their citizenships. This has lead to increased urgency in the prevailing calls to put an official ban on the party.

The AfD is currently polling at 36.5% in Thuringia and continuously trending up.

From the current polling data, only two coalitions are possible: CDU + AfD and LINKE + SPD + CDU. The CDU is needed for both coalitions but has a cooperation ban in place for both the AfD and LINKE.

While it is more likely that the CDU would try to form a coalition with SPD and LINKE, it would be neccessarily unstable, especially considering that the Thuringian CDU is way to the right of the federal CDU.

@Symmetry similar situation in Saxony btw

@Symmetry Just noticed an edge case in Thuringia. There are currently three parties that are polling slightly below the 5% threshhold (Greens 4.4%, BSW 3.6%, FDP3.3%). While it is not known whether the BSW will actually run in this years regional elections, if any two of these three parties would manage to make it over the 5% threshhold, forming a government without the AfD would be virtually impossible as it would require a 4 party coalition of ideologically extremely divergent parties.

@Symmetry They could still from a minority government, which seems much more likely than a coalition with the AfD

Unless the AfD wins an absolute majority, it seems unlikely that they will be part of the government anytime soon. Even the BSW doesn't want to from a coalition with them, the established parties even less so

@Simon74fe minority governments are notoriously unstable and especially in Germany break apart quickly. And if we're talking about a minority government made out of not just three but four ideologically diverging parties, that's not a constellation that is going to hold. Such a scenario will only benefit the AfD because it makes the other parties look weak and incompetent. And once such an arrangement has collapsed once or twice, the CDU (undoubtedly suffering heavy pressure from its local base at that point) will have a very plausible incentive to defect and instead opt for a much more stable coalition with the AfD "for the good of the state" or something along those lines. I believe that such a scenario is more likely than not.

EDIT: all of this is conditional on the AfD not being banned, dissolved or otherwise incapacitated, to which I assign a relatively low probability

@Symmetry but who knows, maybe im completely wrong? thats why i created a market about this:

UPDATE: This could be interpreted as the CDU laying the groundwork for a joint AfD-CDU government.