Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a record 44% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, marking the strongest performance by the party in any German state and a historic breach of the political barriers designed to keep it from power since World War II.
The AfD’s surge came at the expense of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which fell to 17.4%—a historic low for the state—down from 37.1% in 2021. The result, with high turnout at 76.7%, sent shockwaves through German politics and international observers alike.
AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund, 35, declared the outcome a watershed moment. “We have made history in this state,” he told supporters as the projections came in. “It’s a signal for the whole of Germany—a self-confident signal.” The party’s national co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla were present at the celebration.
Despite the record vote share, the AfD fell just short of an absolute majority. The party is projected to win 39 seats in the 83-seat state parliament, three short of the 42 needed to govern alone. This arithmetic has created a complex coalition puzzle: the only party that has not ruled out cooperation with the AfD is the BSW, a populist party that combines far-left economics with far-right migration policies and calls for closer ties to Russia. Together, AfD and BSW would hold 43 seats—one more than a majority—but the BSW’s co-chair, Amira Mohamed Ali, said the party would neither vote for Siegmund nor for CDU Premier Sven Schulze, instead proposing a nonpartisan premier.
The result marks a turning point for Germany’s postwar political system. Since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949, mainstream parties have maintained a “Brandmauer”—a firewall—against cooperation with far-right parties, a safeguard built into German democracy after Nazi rule. That strategy has held for decades, but Saxony-Anhalt’s vote exposed deep cracks in the consensus. “Germany rebuilt its democracy after Nazi rule with unusually strong safeguards against extremism,” according to analysis of the result. “AfD’s breakthrough shows those barriers aren’t stopping Europe’s far right from becoming dominant electoral forces.”
The CDU’s collapse in the state reflects broader trends. The party, which had won every regional election in Saxony-Anhalt since 2002, has struggled to contain the AfD’s rise despite positioning itself as a centrist alternative. Sven Schulze, the CDU’s top candidate, conceded defeat as his party’s vote slumped by more than half. “This was an extremely tough and intensive election campaign,” he said, adding that his party would have to reckon with the result.
The AfD has never governed a German state, though it finished first in Thuringia in 2024—the first far-right victory at state level since World War II—but other parties kept it out of power. Saxony-Anhalt’s result is now the party’s strongest test yet. The state, with a population of 2.1 million, would give the AfD significant local powers over policing, education, and culture if it forms government.
The outcome drew international attention. US President Donald Trump posted the German TV projection on his Truth Social platform, and Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev praised what he called a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD.” By contrast, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said “in Poland only idiots and traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD.” Charlotte Knobloch, the 93-year-old head of the Jewish community in Munich and Bavaria and a Holocaust survivor, said the result frightened her. “On days like this I find it hard to recognise my homeland any more,” she said.
Saxony-Anhalt’s intelligence service has classified the state AfD as a right-wing extremist organization, a designation the party rejects. Siegmund has drawn scrutiny over his treatment of Germany’s Nazi past, declining to call the Holocaust humanity’s worst crime and saying he would not presume to rank all crimes. At AfD events, supporters have engaged in call-and-response chants splitting his surname in ways that critics say evoke Nazi chants.
The broader political landscape now faces a reckoning. The AfD leads national opinion polls ahead of Merz’s conservatives and the Social Democrats, but its electoral heartland lies in eastern Germany. Two weeks after Saxony-Anhalt, voters in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will hold state elections, with the AfD again expected to perform strongly. These results will test whether the firewall strategy can hold nationally or whether Germany’s postwar political consensus is fundamentally shifting.
Sources
- BBC — AfD’s 44% vote share, CDU collapse to 17%, Ulrich Siegmund’s statements, firewall strategy, and international reactions
- Axios — AfD’s record performance, BSW coalition dynamics, firewall context, and intelligence service classification
- Euractiv — CDU’s historic low of 17.4%, AfD’s strongest state performance, and coalition challenges
- Reuters — Election results and AfD’s first-place finish
- Euronews — First far-right party to lead a German state since WWII context
- Guardian — Projection of 44.4% vote share and firewall testing
