AfD Landslide in Saxony-Anhalt Shakes Germany’s Firewall

The night in Magdeburg

The screens in the AfD party headquarters lit up after polls closed and the numbers began to climb. Supporters cheered as projections showed the party at a little over 44 percent of the vote, more than double its showing five years ago in a state of 2.1 million people west of Berlin. The candidate for governor, Ulrich Siegmund, 35, told public broadcaster ARD that voters had sent a signal that things cannot carry on like this and that it was also a signal toward Berlin. Of Chancellor Friedrich Merz he said a very good campaigner for us in this election campaign was Friedrich Merz. Every day this man is in the chancellery is one too many.

“We have written history,” Siegmund said. The room filled with the party motto anything is possible, and the mood was celebratory, but the arithmetic was stubborn. Projections put AfD at least marginally short of an absolute majority, though that could change. The preliminary count later showed 43.8 percent of the vote and 39 seats in the 83-seat state parliament, three short of the 42 needed for an outright majority. The party was seeking support from other parties or individuals in order to govern. AfD’s national co-leader Alice Weidel described the projected result as sensational and said we have received a very clear mandate to govern here. The party’s hand is outstretched to all who want to make Saxony-Anhalt better and move Germany forward.

The incumbent governor Sven Schulze congratulated AfD on becoming the state’s strongest political force and said we as the CDU will also have to deal with this result, without specifying how. The centre-right Christian Democratic Union, which had led Saxony-Anhalt for 24 years, was seen polling around 18 percent, preliminary results putting it at 17.2 percent, losing about half its support. The Left Party, the centre-left Social Democrats and Greens were seen taking around 9 percent each. It was unclear whether the BSW party would get the 5 percent of the vote needed to win seats.

The firewall and the mandate

Modern Germany has not yet had a far-right or right-wing populist party leading a national, state or major-city government. No far-right party has controlled a German state since World War Two. The AfD went into the vote seeking an absolute majority to govern on its own and overcome the so-called firewall of mainstream parties’ refusal to work with AfD. That firewall held in a similar case two years ago in neighbouring Thuringia, where a CDU governor took power with a minority government against a regional AfD that was well short of a majority.

The Saxony-Anhalt branch of the party is one of several classified as a proven right-wing extremist group by the domestic intelligence agency, which points to members’ denigration of migrants from Muslim countries among other things. The party talks of remigration, a politically charged term for the deportation of immigrants. AfD vehemently rejects accusations of extremism and says they’re politically motivated.

The national general-secretary of Merz’s party, Franziska Hoppermann, rejected the idea of backing off its refusal to deal with AfD. AfD is a right-wing extremist party. It wants to leave the euro; that would be economic downfall, she said. It works closely together with Russia, it wants a completely different social model. We will not work with them.

Beatrix von Storch, AfD’s deputy parliamentary leader, told the BBC the party was very, very close to taking power after the historic victory. You cannot say I do not accept the vote of the people, she said. If parties refused to work with the AfD, then we might end up in severe chaos and maybe we have a new election. Her comments were echoed by Siegmund, who said the party had won a clear mandate to govern and that discussions with other parties were initiated on Sunday night and could potentially take days or weeks to conclude. We reach out to everybody first, we will have consultations and then we’ll see whether individual parliamentary groups or MPs would be willing to help us, he added.

The east that never quite caught up

AfD is the biggest opposition party in Germany’s national parliament and is strongest in the formerly communist and less prosperous east, where Saxony-Anhalt is located. Saxony-Anhalt is Germany’s poorest region and there, as in much of east Germany, you often encounter what’s known as Ostalgie, essentially nostalgia in the east for comparatively more stable times under Communism.

Germany spent between 2.3 and 3 trillion pounds 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. The economic blow after the country halted Russian energy imports following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine hit industry hard. The AfD’s softly-softly approach to Russia has appeal in the east.

Siegmund has listed among his top priorities a deportation offensive and dropping incentives for people to come to Germany and exploit our social system. He wants to initiate a long process to withdraw Saxony-Anhalt from the regional public broadcaster, citing concerns about disinformation.

The vote is a blow to Merz, whose centre-right party has led Saxony-Anhalt for 24 years. Analysts describe the stunning victory as seismic, a socio-political earthquake, a watershed moment for Germany. 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, who had promised to slash the AfD’s popularity.

Germany’s 16 states have extensive powers, for example in overseeing security matters and running the education system. That is why the prospect of AfD governing at state level would mean powers over policing and local education.

A signal to Europe

Rarely has the result of a regional election been viewed with such portent for the fate of democracy in Europe. This wasn’t just any European country; it was Germany, a country that has relentlessly isolated far-right political parties since the calamity of Nazism. And it wasn’t just a strange outlier, but rather the latest step in a steady, decade-long march that has brought the far right ever closer to the fulcrum of power in Europe.

With elections scheduled across Europe next year, the striking success of the party could be a harbinger of further far-right victories, according to analysts, as well as a template for how they can be engineered. Its populist, anti-immigrant message echoes those of nationalist leaders in Britain, France, Italy and Spain, all countries where voters harbor many of the same grievances as those in Germany. French voters will elect a new president next spring. An election is due in Spain by August, and in Italy by the end of next year.

Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst who specializes in Europe at Eurasia Group, said developed Europe is going through a version of sophisticated state failure. Governments are unable to address cost-of-living concerns. They are not able to deliver for their voters.

The leader of Spain’s nationalist Vox party, Santiago Abascal, posted on X that the AfD victory in Saxony-Anhalt was a great hope for Germany and for Europe. 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.

Tiny Saxony-Anhalt is causing waves outside Germany. US President Donald Trump 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 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.

Hot on Trump’s social media heels on Sunday night was 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.

What interest might Russia have in German regional elections? 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.

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. Neither the AfD, nor other European parties labelled extreme right or hard right, accept the label. They also differ from one another in tone and party programme. France’s National Rally under Marine Le Pen kicked the AfD out of its grouping in the European Parliament two years ago, for being too radical.

What comes next

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?

The AfD is well-known to be particularly popular in east Germany but it is now polling as the biggest political party nationwide. The German authorities have labelled the AfD, in part, anti-democratic and a number of regional factions of the party, including Saxony-Anhalt, far-right extremist. The AfD is well-known to be particularly popular in east Germany but it is now polling as the biggest political party nationwide.

If the result allows Schulze to try to put together some kind of alliance with smaller parties, that would be delicate, because it would require at least some tacit support from the Left Party, a hard-left party with which the CDU refuses to form coalitions. AfD wants to govern on its own. The party is very, very close to taking power, and the country is watching to see whether the firewall holds or whether a first far-right state government since World War Two finally takes office.