Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany has emerged victorious in the Saxony-Anhalt state election, according to exit polls, but fell short of the seats required to form a government alone.
The AfD secured 44.2 per cent of the vote, according to projections by German broadcaster ARD, more than twice the 17.4 per cent recorded by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union.
AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund celebrated the result, describing it as a major breakthrough for the party.
“We have achieved exactly what we wanted to achieve,” said AfD’s lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund. “We have made history in this state.”
Party co-leader Alice Weidel also described the outcome as “historic”, saying it had given the AfD a clear mandate to govern.
However, the party faces uncertainty over whether it can secure enough support to form a government.
The latest projections showed the AfD winning 39 of the 83 seats in Saxony-Anhalt’s state parliament, three short of the 42 required for an outright majority.
Reporting from Magdeburg, Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said the election had delivered a significant victory for the AfD, but questioned whether the result would translate into control of the state government.
“The reality is the AfD has got the lion’s share of the votes in this election, according to the exit polls. But the question is: is it enough to get them control of the state? Right now, we cannot say for sure,” he said.
Siegmund said the AfD was prepared to engage with parties interested in fundamentally changing the state’s political direction, while insisting that his party would not compromise its position to secure cooperation.
The AfD has never been part of a governing coalition in any of Germany’s 16 states or at the federal level. Mainstream parties have maintained a political “firewall” against cooperation with the far-right party.
AfD national co-leader Tino Chrupalla argued that the election showed voters had rejected the policies of the governing parties.
“The mainstream parties ‘were voted out, or rather, the voters delivered a clear verdict, and I can only encourage them to recognise that the ‘firewall’ has been definitively rejected by the voters today,” Chrupalla told broadcaster ARD.
Saxony-Anhalt’s AfD branch has been designated a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation by the state’s domestic intelligence agency, a classification the party rejects as politically motivated.
Setback for Merz
The election result represents another challenge for Chancellor Merz, whose standing has weakened amid difficulties faced by his coalition government in reviving economic growth.
The CDU finished a distant second, prompting Saxony-Anhalt’s outgoing premier, Sven Schulze, to acknowledge the scale of the defeat.
Schulze congratulated the AfD on its performance and said, “We’re going to have to live with this result”.
He later ruled out cooperation with the AfD, although he had initially avoided giving a definitive response when asked whether the CDU would maintain its firewall against the party.
With no party holding a majority, forming a government could prove complicated. Schulze may need to seek support from several parties, despite the CDU’s traditional refusal to enter formal alliances with both the AfD and the Left party, Die Linke.
AfD campaign
The AfD has gained support in the eastern state by tapping into nostalgia for communist-era East Germany and frustration over the persistent economic gap between eastern and western Germany decades after reunification.
Siegmund has embraced regional identity during his campaign and has frequently been seen riding an East German-made Simson Schwalbe motorcycle. He rode the bike to his polling station in Tangermünde on election day, accompanied by his wife.
Despite his relatively moderate public image, Siegmund campaigned on a hard-line platform that includes plans for what he described as a “remigration and deportation offensive” targeting undocumented migrants.
The AfD also wants to roll back what it calls “woke” policies, including replacing LGBTQ pride flags at public schools with the German national flag. It has additionally proposed changes to history education that would reduce the emphasis placed on Hitler’s Third Reich.
To address the state’s declining population and reliance on foreign workers, the party has proposed encouraging Germans living abroad to return and introducing financial incentives, including “baby bonuses”, for families.
The German Economic Institute has warned that the AfD’s proposed immigration policies could seriously harm Saxony-Anhalt, which depends heavily on foreign-born workers, particularly in the healthcare sector.
There are also concerns that an AfD-led state security administration could expose sensitive information to Russia.
Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier told the Handelsblatt newspaper that Moscow views the AfD as a key instrument in efforts to destabilise Germany.
“The Kremlin ‘makes no secret of the fact that the AfD is the most important instrument for destabilising Germany for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Maier said.
