By Jahanzaib Saqib — SCN NEWS
BERLIN — Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany surged to a historic victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, exit polls showed, more than doubling its share of the vote and inflicting a severe defeat on Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives in an election that could reshape the country's political landscape. An ARD exit poll put the AfD at 44.5%, far ahead of Merz's Christian Democratic Union at 18.5%, although it remained unclear whether the scale of the victory would translate into enough seats for the AfD to govern alone.
The scale of the shift was particularly striking when compared with the previous state election. The AfD received 20.8% in 2021, meaning its projected support has more than doubled, while the CDU fell from 37.1% to 18.5%. The conservatives have governed Saxony-Anhalt since 2002, making Sunday's result not merely an AfD breakthrough but a dramatic reversal in a state long controlled by the CDU.
For the AfD, however, finishing first and taking power are two different questions. Germany's mainstream parties have maintained a political “firewall,” or Brandmauer, refusing cooperation with the AfD. With the party's state organisation classified as far-right extremist by Saxony-Anhalt's domestic intelligence service — a designation the AfD rejects — its ability to build a conventional coalition remains severely constrained.
That makes the eventual distribution of seats almost as important as the AfD's vote share. Germany's proportional electoral system includes a 5% threshold for parties seeking representation, and whether smaller parties cross that barrier can alter how many seats are required for a parliamentary majority. AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund had indicated that he wanted an absolute majority and did not intend to rely on a conventional coalition to govern.
The election therefore presents Germany with an unusual political dilemma: a party can dominate the popular vote while still struggling to convert that victory into executive power because potential coalition partners refuse to work with it. If the AfD falls short of a majority of seats, negotiations among its rivals could still produce a government excluding the election's largest party, depending on the final parliamentary arithmetic.
Saxony-Anhalt has only about 2.1 million residents, but Sunday's vote carries significance far beyond the state's borders. No far-right party has governed a German state since World War Two, and an AfD administration would give the party executive authority at state level in areas including policing, education and cultural policy. The possibility has made the election an important test of whether the AfD can move from opposition and electoral strength into direct government.
The result is also a serious setback for Merz, whose conservatives have tried to contain the AfD's rise while taking a tougher approach to migration and security. Sunday's exit polls suggest that strategy has failed to prevent a major AfD advance in one of its strongest eastern territories, while simultaneously leaving the CDU with less than half the support projected for its principal rival.
Siegmund, 35, had entered the election openly portraying Saxony-Anhalt as part of a larger political transformation. At a final campaign rally in Magdeburg on Saturday, he declared that his movement had already made history and argued that the political force developing in the state was spreading across Germany. Sunday's numbers gave considerable weight to that claim, even though the question of government remained unresolved.
The AfD's result also carries national implications because the party is already the strongest opposition force in Germany's federal parliament and has increasingly challenged the country's traditional parties. A commanding state-level victory provides it with another argument that its support can no longer be treated as a protest phenomenon confined to the margins of German politics.
For Merz and the CDU, the numbers pose the opposite question. If mainstream conservatives cannot recover voters from the AfD even while adopting tougher positions on issues such as migration and security, the CDU faces a strategic choice over how to confront a rival that remains politically isolated by the firewall but increasingly powerful at the ballot box.
The immediate focus will now turn to the final result and seat distribution. If the AfD secures an absolute majority, Germany could enter uncharted post-war political territory with the party capable of governing a state without coalition partners. If it falls short, the result could produce an equally consequential scenario in which mainstream parties attempt to construct a government around a party that finished a distant second in order to keep the overwhelming election winner outside executive power.
Either outcome would make Saxony-Anhalt a major test of Germany's political order. The AfD has demonstrated that the firewall can keep a party out of coalitions, but Sunday's vote raises a much harder question for Germany: how long can that firewall function when the party on the other side commands more than four in every ten votes?