Berlin (AFP)

Germany's extreme right is preparing to make a breakthrough in two regional elections in the former GDR on Sunday that could lead Angela Merkel's coalition into new turmoil.

In Saxony and Brandenburg, two Länder in eastern Germany, some 5.5 million voters are called to the polls on Sunday to elect their new regional parliaments.

If it is only about 12% of the German electorate, these polls, completed by a third in Thuringia, another region of the former East Germany, October 27, will be scrutinized in Germany, 30 years after the fall of the Wall.

They should result in a further boost of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that has shaken up the political landscape since 2013. And who holds his strongholds in the East, while is significantly lower in the west of the country, illustrating the political divide that divides Germany three decades after reunification.

- Radical movement -

In Brandenburg, the Land surrounding Berlin, the AfD is given in a final poll to 21%, a point behind the Social Democratic Party, which today holds the controls in a coalition of the left.

In neighboring Saxony, the other region that votes Sunday, the AfD is preceded by the conservatives of Angela Merkel (CDU), of which this Land is a stronghold, but culminates at 24.5% in the polls.

In both cases it will be a spectacular increase compared to previous polls, if these scores are confirmed: 8.8 points in Brandenburg and close to 15 points in Saxony.

This, however, may not be enough for the AfD to gain power in these regions.

The established parties, in particular the CDU, have already warned that they would not form a coalition with the AfD. The political game will end up very complicated.

These Länder, which have important prerogatives in the German system of education or security, could indeed be governed by wide heteroclite alliances between right and left.

And at the risk of paralyzing political action and stir up a little more discontent in regions already suffering from a "dark mood", in the words of Matthias Platzeck, President of the Commission "30 years of German unity ".

In the Länder, where many young people continue to emigrate each year to the west of Germany and their more attractive salaries, the Germans of the former GDR suffer from a feeling of downgrading, despite a sharp drop in unemployment since 10 years.

Since 2015, Angela Merkel's refugee policy has hit a section of the population who felt that the state was more concerned with migrants than with their fate.

- Pushing Greens? -

The AfD has surfed these fears and is campaigning against traditional formations that it assimilates with the former Communist Party of the GDR.

These regional polls will have the value of a full-scale test for the Chancellor, who has led a fragile coalition with the SPD's Social Democrats since last year, and who has already announced that she will step down in the autumn of 2021 .

Both elections could provoke a "storm" within the coalition, according to Spiegel.

Merkel, from another Eastern state and very unpopular among supporters of the AfD, was careful not to campaign.

She preferred to leave the ground to the local barons of her movement, who are trying to recover the voters left to the extreme right by a very firm speech on issues of security and migration.

The SPD, with no leader for several months and falling freely in the polls, is in an even worse situation. What revive internal debates on the opportunity to remain a member of the unpopular coalition he formed with the Conservatives in Berlin.

In vogue at the federal level, the Greens could do them well.

Traditionally weak in these industrial Länder, they are credited with more than 10% in the polls. What make them unavoidable in future coalitions.

© 2019 AFP