BERLIN — Germany’s far right is on track to claim its biggest electoral success since World War II, with projections showing it will win more than 44 percent of the vote in the eastern region of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday.
The election is seen a key test of whether the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — now comfortably the most popular party in the EU’s biggest economy — is capable of governing.
According to a projection by the broadcaster ARD, the AfD was on course to secure a landslide first place, with 44.4 percent of the vote.
The same projection put the Christian Democratic Union party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz in second place, on 18.5 percent — a devastating collapse from the 37. 1 percent it scored in 2021.
The success of the anti-immigrant AfD in this small state of just 2.1 million inhabitants is a huge blow to his conservatives, and has even sparked speculation about a potential Kanzlertausch, or chancellor swap.
The big question on Sunday night is whether the AfD’s lead will ultimately be large enough for it to govern, or whether other parties will be able to form a coalition against it.
The AfD’s national co-leader Alice Weidel immediately hailed a “historic result” and said the party had “a very clear mandate for governing.”
But the election night arithmetic is still uncertain. If the final results are in line with the projections, the AfD will fall very narrowly short of being able to govern outright in the state parliament.
Much attention will therefore fall on the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance party (BSW), which appears close to the 5 percent threshold of qualifying for Saxony-Anhalt’s regional parliament. The BSW has said it would be willing to cooperate with the AfD, and could secure the election for the far right.
Weidel said her party “always has an outstretched hand” for coalition partners.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, was wary on the question of whether he would be able to become prime minster of the region. “We can’t answer that question right now at 6 p.m. But we’ve achieved exactly what we set out to do. We’ve made history in this country,” he told ARD.
He argued the result was a direct signal to Merz.
“Of course, it’s also a message directed at Berlin. We’re well aware that he’s a very effective campaigner. For us, Friedrich Merz was the face of this campaign. Each day of having this man in the chancellery is one too many. That’s how people in Saxony-Anhalt see it, too.”
Body blow to Merz
The result looks set to be a bruising blow for the CDU that has governed the region over the past 24 years. CDU General Secretary Franziska Hoppermann called it a”very difficult result” and an “overall defeat” for the Christian Democrats.
Sven Schulze, the current prime minister of Saxony-Anhalt, also conceded the severity of the defeat, particularly since turnout appeared to be very high.
“The winner of the election, the AfD, is now the strongest force in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt, and we in the CDU will have to deal with this result,” he said.
The fact that four in 10 voters in Saxony-Anhalt supported the AfD despite its state branch being designated a right-wing extremist organization by the state’s intelligence agency and reports that members of lead candidate Siegmund’s inner circle were part of an organization modeled on the Hitler Youth, speaks to widespread public distrust in mainstream parties, the media, and institutions in eastern Germany — a region that was under communist control during the Cold War.
The party achieved its best result since its founding in 2013 by vowing to deport migrants with a “remigration offensive,” to push for closer relations with Moscow — including by bringing back school exchange programs with Russia — to remove rainbow flags from schools, introduce a “baby welcome grant” of €2,000 for the first two children and €4,000 for each additional child. The party also pledged to reform school curricula to lesson material on Germany’s Nazi past in an effort to end what some of its politicians call a “guilt cult.”
However, the party’s success was apparently due less to its own pledges than to voters’ rejection of mainstream parties, particularly Merz and his conservative bloc. Only 9 percent of voters in Saxony-Anhalt approved of Merz’s performance, according to an ARD exit poll.
Saxony-Anhalt is the German state with the lowest average net income, and economic anxiety — over declining industry and rising energy costs — was a major factor motivating voters. Seventy percent said they were “greatly worried” that rising prices would prevent them from paying their bills, according to an ARD survey, while 58 percent feared they would be unable to maintain their standard of living.
Polls show that the AfD is also leading in the eastern state of Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, where voters go to the ballot on Sept. 20. In Berlin, a traditionally left-wing capital where voters will go to the polls that same day, the AfD is also performing particularly strongly, polling at around 18 percent.
The Saxony-Anhalt result surpasses the AfD’s previous biggest breakthrough in the eastern region of Thuringia, where it won 32.8 percent of the vote in 2024. After that election, the CDU needed to form a minority coalition with left-wing parties.
This story is being updated.
