USA Germany's Far Right AfD set for big win in Eastern State
But it would have significant local powers. The party has been particularly critical of the Bauhaus school of design which the Nazis shut down in the city of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt after they came to power in 1933. The AfD has called it "the dead-end of modernism", prompting some to accuse the party of using similar language to the Nazis.
Nikita, a demonstrator at an anti-AfD "Democracy Festival" in Magdeburg on the eve of the vote said Germans had to "learn from our history and not go back. We don't want the dark times any more".
Responding to the news from Saxony-Anhalt, the veteran head of the Jewish community in Munich and Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, said it frightened her. "On days like this I find it hard to recognise my homeland any more," the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor said, appealing for mainstream parties not to stand by and allow "this decline".
One of the AfD's top figures in Saxony-Anhalt, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, has also been criticised for his approach to Russia. When asked why he had a Russian army mug in his office, he said it was just a souvenir, and "it's not our war".
Turnout in Saxony-Anhalt was particularly high at 76.7%, and AfD supporters in Magdeburg praised Siegmund's success in winning over voters.
One man called Ollie said: "This man gives us what no-one else can give."
"No matter what government, they all just promise things to get better. This is a party for the working people. It is the alternative for Germany," he told the BBC.
Another AfD voter called Bert said people in the east could sense things were not going well: "Things need to improve for us, for my family - I have three children. I'm in fear, I'm really in fear that safety erodes more and more."
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has swept to a record victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling its vote and inflicting a bruising defeat on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives.
The AfD won 44% of the vote, according to the latest projection from public broadcaster ARD, its strongest performance in any German state election. The Christian Democratic Union fell to a historic low of 17.4%, down from 37.1% in 2021.
“We have made history,” said Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate for state premier, as the scale of the victory became clear. Siegmund appealed to members of the CDU to dismantle the ‘firewall’ under which Germany’s mainstream parties refuse to co-operate with the AfD.
“As a democrat, I will always extend a hand to all forces that join us in bringing about a fundamental political turnaround in this country,” he said.
Uncertainty
The AfD nevertheless appeared to have fallen short of the outright parliamentary majority it would need to govern alone. The latest projection gave it 39 seats in the 83-member Landtag, three short of a majority.
The SPD, Greens, Die Linke and CDU have all ruled out governing with the AfD, whose Saxony-Anhalt branch is classified as confirmed rightwing extremist by the state’s domestic intelligence agency.
The result leaves the battered CDU facing an awkward route back to power. A minority coalition with the Social Democrats and Greens could depend on support or abstention from the leftwing Die Linke, a party with which the CDU has also vowed not to co-operate.
The SPD was projected to win 9.2%, followed by the Greens on 8.9% and Die Linke on 8.6%.
Much could still depend on the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a socially conservative party that broke away from Die Linke. It was projected to win 5.1%, narrowly clearing the threshold for representation and taking four seats in an already fragmented parliament.
The liberal Free Democratic party, a member of the outgoing state government, was set to lose all its seats after winning just 2.5%. Counting continued on Sunday night, with provisional official results expected overnight.
The party leaders and their lead candidate were overjoyed as the results were read out, whooping and backslapping as they secured their “historic” victory with 44% of the votes, according to preliminary results.
The win delivered the AfD 39 of 83 seats in parliament, just short of the 42 it needed for an absolute majority.
The party’s route to a majority may lie with working in a coalition, potentially with the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, which passed the 5% threshold to enter parliament – though the AfD has signaled it’s not interested in a deal.
Still, speaking to CNN, a beaming Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s leading candidate, said, “This is a historic moment for our beautiful region. The people have shown very clearly that they finally want political change. And above all, they’ve shown that they want it with us.”
The German government is the largest single donor to Ukraine and the UK is known to have provided Kyiv with missiles used to strike inside Russian territory. This has deeply angered Moscow.
The AfD, by comparison, is pretty pro-Russia. It wants to stop sending military aid to Ukraine, halt sanctions against Moscow and start buying much cheaper Russian energy again. Energy-hungry German industry suffered a huge economic blow after the country halted Russian energy imports, following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The AfD's softly-softly approach to Russia has another appeal in Germany's east, which remains far poorer than the west. This, despite Germany spending between 2.3 and 3 trillion euros (depending on reports and whether inflation is taken into account) to help integrate the former communist part of the country after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
Saxony-Anhalt is Germany's poorest region and there, as in much of east Germany, you often encounter what's known as "Ostalgie" amongst voters; essentially "nostalgia in the east" for comparatively more stable times under communism.
Security chiefs say nations must stick together to stop Russia in Ukraine, otherwise the Kremlin will be tempted to attack inside Nato, such as the Baltic states.
The thing is, Europe's voters are very aware of these outside threats and the impact they have at home. They worry about the impact of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, about crumbling health services at home and dwindling economic security for themselves and their family. Uncontrolled immigration and safety on the streets are huge concerns too.
And this is where the significance of the Saxony-Anhalt vote shines bright. A flashing red warning to traditional political parties, but also to institutions across Europe like the judiciary and security services. Those the AfD dismisses as the self-interested "Establishment".
The AfD campaign slogan in Saxony-Anhalt was an upbeat "Anything is Possible!" Plus a promise to make Germans feel proud of their country again. Till now untried and untested in government, people seem increasingly willing to give them a go.
Voters on this continent feel lost and let down by parties they've supported over and again for decades. Looking right or left now at election time does not mean they've all suddenly become extremist.
By contrast, France's Europe Minister, Benjamin Haddad, an ally of centrist President Emmanuel Macron, warned "this is a serious moment in Europe, seeing the far right win in a regional election in Germany".
Also watching the Saxony-Anhalt election closely was the European Union. The next 12 months is bumper election season across the EU. Ballots are expected in key nations France, Italy, Spain and Poland. Brussels fears more "extreme" parties, left but particularly right of the political spectrum, may benefit across the board.
The leader of Spain's nationalist Vox party, Santiago Abascal, posted on X on Sunday that the AfD victory in Saxony-Anhalt was " a great hope for Germany and for Europe".
The AfD campaigned hard on “remigration” platform, to send non-Germans back to their native nations. As well as being openly pro-Russian, it has plans to push schools and cultural institutions toward more traditional values, curb immigration and overhaul public broadcasting.
"Seismic", "a socio-political earthquake", "a watershed moment for Germany".
This was how political analysts and many media outlets described the stunning victory of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in local elections in Germany on Sunday. Is that an exaggeration?
Saxony-Anhalt is one of the smallest of massive Germany's 16 regions. It boasts a mere 1.7m out of 59m eligible voters nationwide. How significant can its political sentiments be, especially since the AfD narrowly failed to win an outright majority?
The answer: very significant.
First and foremost, at home in Germany.
The vote may have been regional but it impacts at national level. The AfD landslide piles even more pressure on the already beleaguered centrist coalition government in Berlin. It may prove to be the nail in the political coffin of Germany's deeply unpopular conservative Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. He had promised to slash the AfD's popularity.
These political woes will further weaken and distract Germany, the EU's most powerful player, at a time of continental crisis - as Europe struggles to contain Russian aggression, Donald Trump's tariff tantrums and the economic threat from China.
The Saxony-Anhalt result also provokes soul-searching throughout Germany, where the Nazi past still looms large. This is the first outstanding electoral landslide for a hard right nationalist party since the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.
Germany's political mainstream has failed voters, it would seem. What does Europe's biggest single economy, its most populous nation not counting Russia, do now?
Tiny Saxony-Anhalt is causing waves outside Germany too.
None other than the President of the United States swiftly posted the Saxony-Anhalt exit poll on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
The AfD's anti-immigration, anti-woke, "Germany for Germans" message chimes closely with Donald Trump's MAGA missive. Along with a number of other nationalist parties in Europe, the AfD borrows heavily from the Trump playbook - undermining mainstream media, questioning the neutrality of judges and promising to "make Germany great again".
Interesting to note though - the US president is rarely name-checked on the campaign trail in Europe. Politicians are keenly aware just how unpopular he is amongst voters.
Hot on Donald Trump's social media heels on Sunday night was the influential Russian businessman Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. He declared the AfD result "historic", Germany's national government "discredited" and the German Chancellor "humiliated", comparing Friedrich Merz to the UK's not-long-gone prime minister, Keir Starmer, who felt forced to resign this summer.
Surrounded by reporters as he made his way through the event hall in the state capital of Magdeburg, Siegmund told CNN the election result will give his party the mandate to return to “sensible diplomacy” with both Russia and the United States. “We need both if we as Germany want to be successful,” he said.
The party’s co-leader Alice Weidel also told CNN in the immediate minutes after the polls closed, “Germans simply are fed up with policy being made against Germany’s interests. We stood for election very clearly to represent the interests of our country – not Ukraine’s, not any other country’s.”
US President Donald Trump, whose administration has long supported, and been courted by the AfD, posted a photo of the exit polls on his Truth Social.
Kirill Dmitriev, one of President Putin’s closest confidants, reposted Trump on his X account, and another post saying “AfD’s historic win humiliates the arrogance, narrow-mindedness, warmongering, ineptitude and hypocrisy of the discredited German ruling coalition.”
The questions facing the AfD now are whether to govern in coalition or go alone in a minority.
All mainstream parties have ruled out working with the AfD, which was classified as “extremist” by German intelligence for its anti-Muslim and anti-migrant rhetoric. They continue to maintain the so-called firewall by refusing any cooperation on policies with the far-right, a move Weidel slammed as “deeply undemocratic.”
Even if all the other parties did band together, the numbers are so heavily in the AfD’s favor that a grand coalition would still only be able to work in a minority.
Siegmund, speaking on German public broadcaster ZDF, ruled out working in a coalition with the far-left BSW saying, “We want to make it absolutely clear that voters finally get what they voted for after the election,” saying that the BSW was “part of the problem, not the solution.”
However, the AfD party co-chair Tina Chrupalla, said they would be prepared to “extend a hand” to all parties.
Already deeply unpopular across the country, questions will now start to rise as to how Merz can survive this bitter defeat, with the German public broadcaster ARD saying, “the real question is how much longer will he last.”
In Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU lost half of their vote.
Current CDU state minister Sven Schulze said, “This result tells us a great deal… the people have sent a clear message… and that this message must be recognized.”AfD party co-leader Weidel took her opportunity to pour scorn on the CDU and the chancellor by saying that she expected Merz’s removal and federal elections “before Christmas.”With key party officials making frequent trips to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the occupied Crimean Peninsula, the AfD’s support for Russia is no secret. The party is against further aid and defense packages for Ukraine, often referring to defense funding for Kyiv as money that is not being spent on programs for German people.
Party officials have also singled out Ukrainian and Muslim residents when talking about who they wish to deport.
But issues of foreign relations and immigration aren’t decided at the state level. Analyst Grégoire Roos, the director of the Europe and Russia and Eurasia Programs at Chatham House, said he would expect the AfD to lean more into issues of culture, education and local policing in Saxony-Anhalt.
Following her party’s historic success on Sunday, Weidel laid out her party’s ambitions should they succeed in federal elections: “We will cut all unnecessary spending, we will control our borders, we will deport everyone obligated to leave the country.”Voting is under way in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt that could see the Alternative for Germany (AfD) become the first far-right party to take power at a state level since World War II.
A CDU-led administration under incumbent state premier Sven Schulze is the most likely outcome if the AfD does not win a majority.
Weeks of coalition talks could follow the vote, depending on which parties surpass the 5 percent minimum.
AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund, who was previously a member of the CDU, predicted gaining an absolute majority that would lead the anti-establishment party to national victory in 2029. He was named “Germany’s most dangerous man” by the influential magazine Der Spiegel.
“It was the others who erected the firewalls,” he told German tabloid Bild. “If no one wants to work with us, then we’ll just have to do it alone.”
An absolute majority would allow AfD to bypass mainstream parties’ “firewall” noncooperation policy, which the far-right party has already done at the local level.
For the AfD, the Saxony-Anhalt elections are a stepping stone towards its larger ambition: securing national power in the 2029 federal elections.
The CDU is led by deeply unpopular German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Other parties refuse to go into coalition with the AfD, operating a Brandmauer or firewall aimed at keeping the far right out of government. In Saxony-Anhalt, the BSW has offered to co-operate with the AfD on some issues if it gets into the state parliament.
The AfD leads the opinion polls nationally, ahead of the ruling conservatives of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the Social Democrats, but their heartland lies in the eastern states.
They also won the 2024 state election in neighbouring Thuringia, but failed to secure enough seats to win power.Among the AfD's policies is a highly controversial plan for "remigration", which is widely understood to mean mass deportations of migrants, although the party says it refers to deporting criminals and those in the country illegally. It would not be able to achieve either if it ran the government of one of 16 states.But it would have significant local powers. The party has been particularly critical of the Bauhaus school of design which the Nazis shut down in the city of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt after they came to power in 1933. The AfD has called it "the dead-end of modernism", prompting some to accuse the party of using similar language to the Nazis.Nikita, a demonstrator at an anti-AfD "Democracy Festival" in Magdeburg on the eve of the vote said Germans had to "learn from our history and not go back. We don't want the dark times any more".Responding to the news from Saxony-Anhalt, the veteran head of the Jewish community in Munich and Bavaria,
Charlotte Knobloch, said it frightened her. "On days like this I find it hard to recognise my homeland any more," the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor said, appealing for mainstream parties not to stand by and allow "this decline".One of the AfD's top figures in Saxony-Anhalt, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, has also been criticised for his approach to Russia. When asked why he had a Russian army mug in his office, he said it was just a souvenir, and "it's not our war".The populist, far-right, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has surged to a resounding victory in a crucial state election in Germany, but fell just short of winning a majority in its quest to form the country’s first far-right state government since the second world war.The party of Germany’s unpopular chancellor Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democrats (CDU), slumped to a disastrous result in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
AfD’s candidate for governor, Ulrich Siegmund, said “we have written history” and the party had a clear mandate to govern. He told public broadcaster ARD that voters had sent a signal that “things cannot carry on like this”. “A very good campaigner for us in this election campaign was Friedrich Merz,” Siegmund said.AfD was seeking an absolute majority in the state legislature to govern alone and overcome the so-called firewall of mainstream parties’ refusal to work with the party. AfD in Saxony-Anhalt has been classed as “rightwing extremist” by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.Final results showed AfD falling three seats short, with 39 lawmakers in an 83-member parliament. Siegmund, 35, said it would not engage in “games” such as a minority government. But it was not evident how its divided opponents could assemble any stable government without it.
AfD won 43.8% of the vote, more than double its showing five years ago in the region of 2.1 million people west of Berlin.That was far ahead of Merz’s CDU , which polled 17.2% – losing about half its support – and won 15 seats. The centre-left Social Democrats polled 9.3%, the Greens 8.9% and the Left party 8.6%, winning eight seats apiece.The BSW party, which has said it would not elect either Siegmund or incumbent Sven Schulze as governor but criticises the “firewall” against AfD, took 5.3% and five seats.
Final results showed AfD falling three seats short, with 39 lawmakers in an 83-member parliament. Siegmund, 35, said it would not engage in “games” such as a minority government. But it was not evident how its divided opponents could assemble any stable government without it.
AfD won 43.8% of the vote, more than double its showing five years ago in the region of 2.1 million people west of Berlin.
That was far ahead of Merz’s CDU , which polled 17.2% – losing about half its support – and won 15 seats. The centre-left Social Democrats polled 9.3%, the Greens 8.9% and the Left party 8.6%, winning eight seats apiece.The BSW party, which has said it would not elect either Siegmund or incumbent Sven Schulze as governor but criticises the “firewall” against AfD, took 5.3% and five seats.
Participation in the election was at a record high of 76.5%.Addressing jubilant supporters after exit polls had been published, Siegmund said his party was ready to reach out to all powers that strove for political change.Siegmund turned up to vote on Sunday morning with his wife, riding an East German-era moped in the party colours, which was also a prominent prop during the election campaign in rallies across the state. In a statement in front of the polling station, he voiced his optimism that the party would achieve “45%, and some”, and saying he wanted to “build bridges”.Tensions before the election were high, with a considerable police presence and a number of demonstrations taking place across the state. Thousands of opponents of the AfD gathered in the state capital, Magdeburg, on Saturday, for a “festival of democracy”.On Saturday evening, a message beamed on to the facade of Magdeburg Cathedral read: “We do not abandon what we love. True love of the homeland is not the AfD.”
The bishop of Magdeburg, Gerhard Feige, in an address to a gathering of churchgoers, warned against forces “that want to sow discord, stoke mistrust and fear”. He drew parallels with history, warning that a democracy has the potential to abolish itself. “Not everyone who votes or is elected democratically is a democrat,” he said.
The German Economic Institute has warned of the far-reaching consequences for the German economy, in Saxony-Anhalt and beyond. It said the AfD’s immigration policy would be “calamitous” for the state, which has an ageing, dwindling population and is heavily dependent on foreign workers.
Critics have also warned that an AfD-run state, due to the Kremlin-friendly stance of the party, could leak sensitive information to Russia. The AfD has dismissed such claims. It has said it would seek to reform the domestic intelligence service, calling it biased.
Posted on 2026/09/07 09:38 AM