Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party won a landslide victory in Sunday's state election in Saxony-Anhalt, taking 43.8 percent of the vote and coming within three seats of an outright majority — the closest the party has ever come to governing a German state on its own since the country's postwar political order was built on excluding the far right from power.
Preliminary official results gave the AfD 39 of 83 seats in the state legislature, three short of the 42 needed for a majority. It was more than double the 20.8 percent the party won in Saxony-Anhalt five years ago, and it left the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a distant second place, collapsing to 17.2 percent and 15 seats from 37.1 percent in 2021. The Social Democrats took 9.3 percent, the Greens 8.9 percent and the Left party 8.6 percent, each securing eight seats. The upstart Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which did not exist at the last election, won 5.3 percent and five seats, while the pro-business Free Democrats were wiped out of the legislature entirely, falling to 2.6 percent. Turnout reached 77.8 percent, a record for the state and a sharp jump from 60.3 percent in 2021, according to official state election figures.
A firewall under strain
Since German reunification, mainstream parties across the political spectrum have upheld what is known as the Brandmauer, or firewall — a standing refusal to form governing coalitions with the far right at any level of government. Merz's own CDU formally codified a version of that policy in 2018. Saxony-Anhalt's AfD branch has separately been classified a confirmed right-wing extremist organization by the state's domestic intelligence agency, a designation the party disputes.
Sunday's result does not hand the AfD power outright, but it is by far the strongest performance a far-right party has managed in a German state election in the postwar era, and it arrived on the strength of a historic turnout that suggests the party mobilized voters who had previously sat out state elections. Ulrich Siegmund, who led the AfD's list in Saxony-Anhalt, told supporters the party had "made history in this state" and that "things cannot carry on like this," framing the vote as a mandate for change. He also credited Merz, somewhat pointedly, as "a very good campaigner for us" — a jab at the CDU leader's national standing amid a struggling governing coalition in Berlin, according to reporting on the results.
Incumbent state premier Sven Schulze of the CDU acknowledged his party had been "hit hard" but said he would not govern with the AfD, reaffirming the firewall even as some voices within his own party — including the head of the CDU's youth wing in the state — have argued in recent weeks that cooperation with the AfD may eventually become unavoidable. Merz made no public statement on the results Sunday evening, a silence that some commentators read as reflecting the bind the result puts him in nationally, ahead of further state votes.
What happens next
With the AfD short of a majority and every other party in the legislature ruling out working with it, forming a government in Magdeburg now falls to an unwieldy set of alternatives. Schulze is expected to explore a multi-party coalition stitching together the CDU, SPD, Greens and possibly the Left party or the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — a combination that would be arithmetically workable only with several partners at once, and one that has no precedent in the state. Talks are expected to stretch over weeks, and it remains possible no stable government emerges quickly.
The result reverberated beyond Saxony-Anhalt. Coming after months in which national polling has shown the AfD running competitively with, or ahead of, the CDU, Sunday's vote will intensify pressure on Merz's coalition in Berlin and is being watched closely elsewhere in Europe, where far-right parties have made gains from France to the Netherlands. Analysts described the firewall strategy — built on the presumption that mainstream parties can simply out-organize the far right at the ballot box — as having failed on its own terms in Saxony-Anhalt, even if it held on the narrower question of who actually forms the next government.
For now, Saxony-Anhalt enters an uncertain interim period, governed by Schulze's outgoing administration while parties negotiate. The AfD, for its part, has signaled it will not go quietly into opposition. Siegmund said the party would reject any "games" aimed at freezing it out through a minority government, setting up a contentious legislative session in the 2.1-million-person state even before a new government is formed.
