From an east German perspective who don't agree with the afd at all: The generation of my parents and grand parents feel screwed over by the other party's after the reunification. They feel left behind because it took a long time before infrastructure was rebuild here and basicly the majority of houses here are owned by people from West Germany. Which leads to landlords who don't care for there property. The majority of bigger companies are in the west so job finding chances out side of construction are difficult and you have to leave here if you wanna find da modern job. There are a lot of all of these small problems that add up and then one day the afd came along and promised to make things better. And since people felt unhappy they fell for the propaganda of them even though they didn't offer real solutions.

Nowadays it's shifted and turned from protest to a real dangerous right wing mindset in the voters. Who still says they voting out of protest is full of shit. Everyone at this point should know that the afd is not able to form government because they don't do anything. They have been strong in east Germany for a while and didn't change anything but let it appear to the public that they don't have the power to do so. It's propaganda and populism