The extreme right sweeps in Saxony-Anhalt and could end up governing

BarcelonaThe far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has swept the elections in Saxony-Anhalt, as all polls had been predicting for months, in a day with a record turnout of 75%. With 95% of the vote counted, the AfD has obtained 44.6% of the votes, more than double the support it gathered in the 2021 elections (20.8%), but it falls just short of an absolute majority.

The results also confirm the stark collapse of the Christian Democrats of the CDU, led by the current state premier, Sven Schulze, who achieved 16.9%, a drop of more than 20 percentage points compared to the previous elections (37.1%). The leader of the conservative party arrived at the elections with the hope of being able to retain his position if he could reach an agreement with enough parties by virtue of thebrandmauer, the sanitary cordon that until now has prevented the ultra-right from reaching any position of power. But the extraordinary result of the AfD puts this possibility in doubt once again.

The key may be held by the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, which has entered Parliament with 5.2% of the votes. This group—a party considered far-left with a very hard-line stance on immigration and a pro-Russian tendency—is the only one that has shown openness to cooperating with the AfD, although it is not clear if it would give its 'yes' to an investiture vote in favor of the AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund.

For the moment, projections based on the provisional results grant 39 seats to the AfD in an 83-member chamber. If it ends up obtaining the support (or abstention) of the BSW, it will be the first time since the Nazi era that a far-right party returns to power in Germany. "We have made history; we will take back our country," celebrated the AfD candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, who extended a hand to "all democratic forces that want to make better policies" and stressed that issues such as immigration and national security are non-negotiable. His main rival, the CDU leader, congratulated him and said that the party will have to face this result, "also beyond" the state.

The good results for the AfD in this region could be repeated on September 20th in the state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, both also in the east of the country. This would place the federal government, led by the increasingly unpopular Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, in an even more difficult situation. Lars Klingbeil, co-leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and vice-chancellor of Merz's governing coalition, has stated that this Sunday's results are a signal for the federal executive, while the chancellor remains silent.

The AfD's national co-leader, Alice Weidel, has considered the results as "a clear mandate to govern" and said they are willing to talk to any "reasonable" party. The party already made history in September 2024, when it finished first in the Thuringia state elections –headed by the party's most ultra-right leader, Björn Höcke, twice convicted for making Nazi proclamations in public–, with 33% of the votes, ten points ahead of the CDU. In the last federal elections, in February 2023, the AfD achieved 20% of the votes, as the second most voted party. Until now, however, the radical group has only managed to win four mayoralties in small municipalities, and the strategy of the cordon sanitaire has generally prevailed.

The nostalgia for a past not lived

Siegmund has exploited the nostalgia from before the reunification of the two Germanys, even though he did not live through it. The AfD has seized upon what is known as the Vespa of East Germany, the Simson brand, with which the party leader in Saxony-Anhalt was seen during the campaign. With this, he wanted to reinforce the sense of identity of East Germans and strengthen the sentiment of grievance and structural disadvantage compared to those in the West. Although East Germany has largely recovered its standard of living, many young people still express concerns about financial security and inequality of opportunity. And the AfD has taken advantage of this to capture the youth vote: in the 2025 federal elections, voters in this state between 18 and 34 years old reached 40%, compared to 25% in the previous elections.

The state governments have significant powers in areas such as education and culture. And the AfD of Saxony-Anhalt –one of the branches of the party that German security services have categorized as an extreme right-wing organization– proposes a change in schools and cultural institutions to reinforce conservative values –in favor of "normal families" with a father and a mother– and marginalize immigrants, for example, by segregating refugee children in special classes. In the event that it ends up governing, the AfD has said that it will ban rainbow flags in schools, which will be replaced by the German national flag, which will be hoisted every day.

The concern over a landslide victory for the ultra party also stems from the fact that it is one of the parties closest to the Kremlin in Europe. German security services have warned that disinformation campaigns promoted by Russia against AfD rivals have increased.

Blow for the CDU and the liberals

The party that has remained out of Parliament is the liberal FDP, the current governing partner of the CDU in this state, to which projections grant 2.5% of the votes. The Social Democrats, the third pillar of the current regional coalition, have registered a slight improvement, with 9.1% support. But the loss of one of the partners makes things even more difficult for the Christian Democrat leader if he wants to try to form an alternative government to that of the far right. With the FDP out of the equation, only the Social Democrats and the Greens (8.9%) remain, because the CDU has refused to make a pact with The Left (8.4%), which it considers far-left.

Even if there were some option for the CDU, reaching an agreement with The Left would not be an easy task. The chancellor and party leader himself, Friedrich Merz, has maintained this week his rejection of the left-wing party: "Both the AfD and The Left have such important differences with the CDU that cooperation with them is out of the question," he told the newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. This leaves practically only one option if one wants to prevent the AfD from governing: that of a three-party minority executive, with the occasional external support of The Left, the current model in the states of Thuringia and Saxony.

With the preliminary results, however, neither the AfD on its own (39 seats) nor a possible coalition of the CDU, the Greens, the SPD, and The Left (40) would have any chance of electing a minister-president in a first or second round of voting. In the third round, however, the state constitution stipulates that abstentions are not counted and that only the majority of votes cast decide the election of the head of government. This means that an abstention by the BSW in the third round could lead to the investiture of Ulrich Siegmund or the re-election of Sven Schulze.