G
ermany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won the state election in Saxony-Anhalt by a wide margin, delivering a major political breakthrough for the party while falling just short of the absolute majority needed to govern alone.
Preliminary official results showed the AfD winning 43.8 percent of the vote, more than twice the 17.2 percent secured by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The result marks the AfD’s strongest performance in the eastern German state and intensifies pressure on mainstream parties that have long refused to cooperate with it.
AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund celebrated the result as a historic achievement, saying the party had accomplished exactly what it set out to do. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel also described the outcome as “historic” and said it had given the party a clear mandate to govern, although it remained uncertain whether the AfD would be able to form a government.
The latest projections gave the AfD 39 seats in the 83-member state parliament, leaving it three seats short of the 42 required for an absolute majority. That means the party cannot govern on its own and will need either support from other parties or an alternative parliamentary arrangement to exercise power.
The result presents a difficult dilemma for Saxony-Anhalt’s mainstream parties. The AfD has never been part of a governing coalition in any of Germany’s 16 states or at the federal level because the country’s established parties have maintained a political “firewall” against cooperation with the far right.
AfD national co-leader Tino Chrupalla argued that the election demonstrated that voters had rejected the policies of the governing coalition and claimed the results showed that the firewall had been politically defeated.
But the CDU’s state leadership has indicated that it will not cooperate with the AfD. Saxony-Anhalt Premier Sven Schulze acknowledged the scale of the defeat and said his party would have to accept the result, while later stating that he did not intend to work with the AfD.
The election result is also a setback for Merz, whose popularity has declined as his coalition government struggles to revive economic growth in Germany, Europe’s largest economy.
The CDU finished a distant second, leaving the party facing difficult negotiations over how to form a governing coalition without the AfD. Schulze could attempt to build an alliance involving several other parties, but the parliamentary arithmetic is complicated by the CDU’s traditional refusal to cooperate with both the AfD and the Left party, Die Linke.
The AfD’s victory reflects its growing strength in eastern Germany, where the party has tapped into longstanding dissatisfaction over economic disparities between the former communist east and western Germany.
The party has also sought to appeal to regional identity and nostalgia. Siegmund has cultivated an image linked to eastern Germany, including riding a Simson Schwalbe, a motorcycle produced in the former East Germany, during his campaign and to the polling station on election day.
At the same time, his political programme remains sharply opposed to immigration and liberal social policies. Although Siegmund has been portrayed as a more approachable face of the AfD, his campaign included a pledge to launch what he called a “remigration and deportation offensive” against undocumented migrants from the first day in office.
The AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt branch has been classified by the state’s domestic intelligence agency as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation. The party rejects that designation, describing it as politically motivated.
The party’s election platform extends beyond immigration. It has promoted an anti-“woke” agenda that includes replacing LGBTQ pride flags in public schools with German national flags and changing the way modern German history is taught, including reducing the emphasis placed on Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
The AfD has also proposed measures aimed at addressing population decline, including financial incentives for families and efforts to encourage Germans living abroad to return to the country.
Immigration is one of the AfD’s central political issues, but its proposed policies have raised concerns among economic experts in Saxony-Anhalt, a state that depends heavily on foreign-born workers.
The German Economic Institute has warned that the party’s immigration policies could seriously damage the state because of its reliance on foreign workers, particularly in the healthcare sector.
Security concerns have also been raised over the possibility of an AfD-led state government. Critics fear that control of state security institutions by the party could create risks involving the handling of sensitive information and Russia.
Thuringia Interior Minister Georg Maier told the Handelsblatt newspaper that the Kremlin views the AfD as an important instrument for destabilising Germany, reflecting broader concerns about the party’s relationship with Moscow.
For now, the election has left Saxony-Anhalt facing a complicated political landscape. The AfD has won the largest share of the vote and demonstrated substantial support among voters, but it lacks the seats needed to govern alone. At the same time, the established parties remain committed to excluding it from government.
That leaves the CDU and its potential coalition partners with the difficult task of assembling a parliamentary majority while responding to an electorate that has delivered a decisive victory to the far right.
The result is therefore significant beyond Saxony-Anhalt itself. It strengthens the AfD’s claim that it has become a major force in German politics while testing whether the country’s traditional political firewall can withstand continued electoral gains by the far right.
For Merz and the CDU, the defeat represents another warning that economic frustration, regional grievances and concerns over immigration are reshaping Germany’s political landscape.
(Source: Aljazeera English)
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