Far-Right AfD Poised to Win First State Government in Postwar Germany
Polling stations opened in Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September 2026 with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) projected to take 41 percent of the vote in the state election, putting the far-right party on track to control a regional parliament for the first time since the Second World War The Guardian. Al Jazeera separately projected an AfD win, which would make it the first far-right party to govern one of Germany's 16 states since 1945 Al Jazeera.
Saxony-Anhalt accounts for less than 3 percent of Germany's national electorate, yet its result may serve as a bellwether — an early indicator — for federal political trends DW. The AfD entered the race looking for a breakthrough at the state level, building on its role as the second-strongest party in the federal Bundestag (Germany's national parliament) after the 23 February 2025 election, where it took 20.8 percent of the vote and 152 seats Bundestag.
The 2025 federal election produced a clear rightward shift among German voters. The CDU/CSU (the center-right conservative bloc) became the largest parliamentary group with 28.6 percent of second votes — Germany's proportional-representation ballot, which determines each party's seat share. The SPD (center-left Social Democrats) dropped to 16.4 percent (120 seats), while Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (the Greens) fell to 11.6 percent Bundestag. Die Linke (the Left party) took 8.8 percent, and the CSU alone accounted for 4.9 percent Bundeswahlleiter. Turnout reached 82.5 percent, up sharply from 76.4 percent in 2021 Bundeswahlleiter. The Federal Returning Officer's final count adjusted second-vote totals slightly from preliminary figures: BSW gained 4,277 additional votes, CDU gained 1,674, and the AfD gained 1,632 Bundestag.
In Saxony-Anhalt itself, polls indicated that CDU State Premier Sven Schulze led AfD candidate Siegmund as voters' preferred choice for state premier Reuters. That personal-preference gap, however, exists alongside the AfD's projected 41 percent vote share, raising the question of whether Schulze's coalition options can contain a party polling at that level. The AfD's federal trajectory adds weight to that question: a party that won just over one-fifth of the national vote eight months ago is now polling at double that share in an eastern state.
The broader context here is the accelerating realignment in eastern German politics, where the AfD has consolidated support across successive elections. The federal election already showed the party's national reach; a state-level win in Saxony-Anhalt would give it governing authority for the first time. The constitutional and coalition-building stakes are substantial. Germany's other parties have maintained a firewall — known as the Brandmauer — against cooperating with the AfD at the federal level. But a state result where the AfD commands over 40 percent of the vote places real strain on that consensus. If no viable coalition can form without the AfD, the question of whether to break that isolation shifts from abstract debate to immediate governing necessity.
Saxony-Anhalt's bellwether status also means the result will be read as a signal for upcoming contests in other eastern states. A 41 percent projected share for the AfD, if confirmed, would exceed the party's federal performance by a wide margin and suggest that the gap between eastern and western German voting behavior continues to widen rather than narrow.
The 2025 federal election's record turnout of 82.5 percent already pointed to a politically energized electorate. The Bundestag's representative election statistics, based on a sample of roughly 1.9 million eligible voters and 1.6 million voters, will eventually provide detailed demographic data on how that mobilization spread across age, gender, and occupational categories Bundeswahlleiter. Those findings, when released, will offer additional texture on the coalition of voters driving the AfD's eastern strength.
For now, the Saxony-Anhalt result hinges on whether the projected numbers hold and whether the CDU under Schulze can assemble a coalition that excludes the AfD despite its projected plurality. If the AfD does take power, the firewall that has kept the far-right from executive office for eight decades will have been breached at the state level for the first time.
