German leader confident that surging far-right party will shrink again before next election

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed optimism that support for a far-right party that’s been surging in the polls lately will shrink to previous levels again by the time of the next national election in 2025. The far-right Alternative for Germany party received 10.3% of the vote in the last national election in 2021 — a slight decline from 2017, when it got 12.6% in the wake of the European migration crisis. Recent polls have shown support for the party, known by its German acronym AfD, at around 20% and ahead of Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats. Scholz told reporters Friday in Berlin that he’s “quite confident that AfD won’t perform much differently at the next federal election than it did at the last.”