Anti-Immigration AfD Posts Historic Win in Eastern German State Election

Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party more than doubled its last result in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday and finished first by a wide margin, according to public-broadcaster projections, putting a party the Berlin establishment has spent a decade trying to quarantine on the edge of running an eastern German state.

ARD and ZDF exit polls and later Infratest dimap projections put AfD at about 44 percent of the vote, up from 20.8 percent in 2021. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, which has governed the state, collapsed to roughly 17 to 18.5 percent — about half its 37.1 percent showing five years ago and the party’s worst Saxony-Anhalt result on record. The Social Democrats, Left, and Greens each landed near 9 percent. Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW appeared to clear the 5 percent threshold. The Free Democrats, part of the outgoing coalition, were projected out of the legislature entirely. Turnout jumped to a record in the mid-to-high 70s, compared with 60.3 percent in 2021.

“We have made history in this state,” AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund, 35, said after the first numbers posted. Party co-leader Alice Weidel called it “a historic result and a very clear mandate to form a government” and added, “The CDU will not win another election.” Co-leader Tino Chrupalla went further and said Siegmund “will be the new minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt.”

Whether that happens is the fight that starts Monday. Projections had AfD just short of an outright majority in an 83-seat Landtag — on the order of 39 seats — which would leave Siegmund needing either a partner or a tolerated minority government. He had said before election day that he would take the top job only with a stable majority of his own. On Sunday night he softened that line just enough to keep the door open, saying he would “extend a hand to all forces that want a political change” on migration and internal security but would not “bend” on core positions. Weidel said the party would talk to anyone. CDU, SPD, Greens, and the Left repeated the “Brandmauer,” or firewall: no coalition with AfD. Outgoing CDU minister-president Sven Schulze conceded and congratulated the winners, then signaled he still hoped a multi-party bloc could keep AfD out of the statehouse.

Saxony-Anhalt is a state of about 2.1 million people. The result is larger than the map. No party outside the postwar CDU/CSU or SPD has held a single-party governing majority in a West German–style state parliament since 1949, and no formation labeled this far outside the mainstream has won a German state election since World War II. Nationally, recent INSA polling already had AfD first at about 28 percent, ahead of Merz’s conservatives near 20 percent. A statehouse in Magdeburg would be the first hard test of whether the firewall is a principle or a talking point.

The campaign was not subtle. AfD ran on a “remigration and deportation offensive” against illegal migrants, an end to what Weidel calls open-border “Islamization,” and a harder line on crime. Weidel has said Syrian protected status should be revoked and that people who will not leave “must be deported by force.” The party also promised German flags instead of pride flags in schools, bonuses to raise the birth rate in a shrinking state, and a softer approach to Moscow — the last of which German officials and the Kremlin’s critics treat as a security problem, not a talking point. Germany’s domestic intelligence service has labeled the Saxony-Anhalt AfD chapter a confirmed right-wing extremist organization; a court earlier put a nationwide version of that designation on hold. Voters in the former East, and a growing share of younger voters, treated the label as background noise.

Merz spent the campaign warning that international investors would not cut ribbons with an AfD minister-president. The German Economic Institute said AfD’s migration program would be “ruinous” in a state that already relies on foreign-born workers, including in health care. Sunday’s returns suggest those arguments moved fewer voters than the border, the crime numbers, and a decade of being told there was no alternative. Thousands protested in Magdeburg on Saturday under banners reading “life is better without Nazis.” They did not stop the count.

Final seat math will settle overnight. If AfD falls short of 42 seats, Berlin’s parties will try to assemble a blocking coalition that the electorate just cut in half. If the last boxes push Siegmund over the line, Germany will have its first AfD-run state government, and Merz will own the national aftershock. Either way, the message from an eastern state that turned out in record numbers was the same one American voters have been sending on the border: the public is done being governed by a consensus that no longer has their consent.