Will Musk, Vance Boost Nationalists in German Elections Sunday?

In less than 24 hours, Germans will vote in an election that much of the world will be closely watching.

One question that has been asked increasingly about this election is whether the blessings of Elon Musk and J.D. Vance will boost the vote of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — a nationalist party that takes a hard line on illegal immigration, is defiant of the European Union, is skeptical about Germany's role in Ukraine, and has been ruled out as a partner in a future governing coalition by the front-runner conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party.

Since its founding 12 years ago, the AfD has gone from barely missing the 5% threshold for seats in the Bundestag (Germany's parliament) to running second to the CDU in nearly all polls on the Sunday election.

A just-completed Forsa Poll showed the CDU leading among likely voters with 29%, followed by the AfD with 21%, the ruling Social Democratic Party (SDP) of Chancellor Olof Scholz at 15%, the Greens at 13%, and the rest in single digits. 

But in recent weeks, two Americans close to President Donald Trump have made clear their fondness for the AfD. Elon Musk, the president's close adviser, took to X on Wednesday to underscore his long-standing support for AfD. He has also appeared on a "live talk" on X with AfD chancellor nominee Alice Weidel and was featured in a video shown at a recent AfD rally.

Musk's latest sign of support for the controversial party comes on the heels of Vance holding a much-publicized meeting with Weidel while he was attending the Munich Security Conference. They met at his hotel room because Weidel and the AfD were shut out of the Security Conference, leading the U.S. vice president to lecture conference attendees that "[s]hutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy."

Will this help the AfD rise in the polls on Sunday?

"I think it won't change much," Martin Klingst, bestselling author and editor-at-large of the venerable German publication Die Zeit, told Newsmax. "The majority of Germans want Musk and Trump to stay out of our affairs. They're not going to vote for AfD anyway."

Klingst added that in his opinion, with CDU leader Friedrich Merz flatly ruling out a coalition with the AfD, "[T]he three parties that are most likely to coalesce in one way or the other are CDU, SPD, and the Greens. Despite all their differences, they are united in their support of Ukraine and in their opposition to President Donald Trump's embrace of Vladimir Putin."

But others feel there is a danger in the so-called grand coalition of which Klingst spoke. In an interview with Newsmax last week, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said, "The question is which parties form the coalition. I think that the recent years have shown that if the Green Party is involved, it is killing for the Germany economy. And it is not favorable for the European economy, either.

"And the Socialists, we have seen that these grand coalitions have ended up in no characteristical policies and a lack of stability."

Szijjarto emphasized, "The AfD is growing more and more popular. They are taking positions that are more and more in line with the German people. So the question is how long the other parties can push them out from the heart of German politics."

Predicting that the AfD might get 25% — 4 percent above its latest poll showing — he said of Merz's refusal to consider the party as a coalition partner: "Is it possible in a democracy to stigmatize a quarter of your population as extremists and as radical? This is a very important question."

On Sunday, the German voters will begin to answer that very important question. 

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.