The far-right Alternative for Germany won a historic landslide in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, taking 43.8% of the vote and 39 of 83 parliamentary seats, falling just three short of an outright majority and immediately demanding that other parties enter talks to allow it to govern.
No far-right party has controlled a German state since World War Two. The result sent shockwaves through Europe. It piled pressure on Germany’s federal government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose conservative CDU saw its share of the vote nearly halved to 17.2%.
Democracy demands cooperation, AfD says
AfD deputy parliamentary leader Beatrix von Storch told the BBC the party was “very, very close” to taking power and called on opponents to enter talks. “You cannot say, I do not accept the vote of the people,” she said. She warned that if parties refused to cooperate, “then we might end up in severe chaos and maybe we have a new election.”
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, told a news conference on Monday that the party had won a “clear mandate to govern.” The state’s defeated premier, the CDU’s Sven Schulze, conceded that the mandate “now lies with the AfD.” Siegmund said discussions with other parties were initiated on Sunday night and could take days or weeks.
A firewall under strain
Most German parties maintain a so-called firewall, an agreement not to cooperate with the far-right in a way that would give it political power. Von Storch told the BBC the AfD was talking to individuals within the CDU group who were “very, very unhappy with their own party,” though no party has formally agreed to coalition talks.
One idea being floated, according to the BBC, is an informal deal whereby the left-wing populist BSW, which is set to win five seats and shares the AfD’s tough stance on immigration and support for importing Russian gas, could give tacit support to allow the AfD to form a minority government. Another possibility, at least in theory, is a minority coalition led by the CDU, though that appears very unlikely. A fresh election to break the deadlock has also been mooted by Siegmund, who said he did not want to compromise on his policy goals.
Merz told a press conference he was “deeply shocked” by the result, describing it as “seismic... not just in the country but also in my own political party.” He said it was not possible to return to “business as usual” and that the country needed “profound reforms.” According to the BBC, Merz described the Saxony-Anhalt defeat as the worst the CDU had suffered “in years, if not decades.”
Saxony-Anhalt, with a population of 2.1 million, is a traditional hub for German chemicals and motor supplies that has suffered disproportionately from the post-unification collapse of east German industry and the recent spike in energy prices, according to Berenberg Chief Economist Holger Schmieding. The public is “furious,” former CDU Economic Affairs Minister Peter Altmaier told CNBC, after five years of economic stagnation and a lack of job creation.
The AfD’s plans for the state include segregating child refugees into special classes and setting up a task-force to help detain and deport migrants who no longer have the right to remain. The party’s broader “remigration” policy is widely understood to mean mass deportations of migrants, though the party says it refers to deporting criminals and those in the country illegally. Domestic intelligence classifies the state’s AfD as “right-wing extremist,” a designation Siegmund rejects.
International reactions divided sharply. According to the BBC, US President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the projected results on his Truth Social platform, and Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev praised a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD.” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the BBC reported, said “in Poland only idiots and traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD.”
Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, called the result “extraordinary” and potentially the “most consequential German state-election result of the postwar era.” He warned that if current trends continue, upcoming elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin could turn “a regional earthquake into a rolling national crisis.” CNBC reported that German markets were calm on Monday, with yields on government bonds, known as bunds, slightly higher, in line with the rest of Europe.
Von Storch offered a final warning to the party’s detractors, according to the BBC. “Wake up and realise what happened in several other European states,” she said. “The conservative parties will disappear from the landscape as it happened in Italy, as it’s about to happen in the UK, as it might also happen in France.”