Germany’s far-right and pro-Russian Alternative for Germany has scored its strongest result in any state election, winning 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday and more than doubling its 2021 share. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU collapsed to 17.2% in a state where the CDU was traditionally dominant.
The AFD win came as turnout jumped to 78% high, a post-reunification record in the state and far above the 60.3% recorded five years ago. Analyses of voter movement show the AfD pulled in a large bloc of former non-voters — on one count around 157,000 — as well as tens of thousands who had previously backed the CDU.
Party co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla celebrated with their lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund in Magdeburg and claimed a mandate to govern. The AfD still fell three seats short of an outright majority in the 83-seat Landtag, with 39 seats. CDU, SPD, Greens and Die Linke have again ruled out coalition with the AfD, whose Saxony-Anhalt branch is classified as confirmed right-wing extremist by the state intelligence agency. The smaller Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance scraped over the 5% threshold and could yet decide whether any arrangement around the AfD is even mathematically possible.
Saxony-Anhalt is a small eastern state of just over two million people. In 2024 the AfD finished first in Thuringia but was kept out of office. This result is bigger, and it arrived after the party spent years telling abstainers that voting was the only way to punish Berlin.
It is yet to be seen how a state government is going to be formed.
Feature photo from German public broadcaster (MBR).
Footage below of AFD supporters in Saxony celebrating the result.
Newsroom
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