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Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party won 43.8% of the vote in Sunday’s Saxony-Anhalt state election, according to The Guardian, more than double its share from the same contest five years ago.
The result is the party’s best-ever performance in a German state race and places it closer to leading a state government than any far-right party since the Second World War.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democrats fell to 17.2%, losing roughly half the support they held five years ago. The centre-left Social Democrats scraped 9.3%. No other mainstream party broke double digits.
AfD Falls Short of an Outright Majority
Despite the historic margin, the AfD did not win an outright majority. Final results, reported by The Guardian’s earlier coverage, gave the party 39 seats in the 83-member state parliament, three short of the number needed to govern alone.
AfD candidate for governor Ulrich Siegmund, 35, told public broadcaster ARD that voters had sent a signal that things could not continue as they were, and he called Merz a particularly effective campaigner for the AfD.
Siegmund also declared the party was open to working with any democratic forces seeking genuine policy change, while stating that migration and domestic security were not negotiable issues.
The CDU described its outcome as bitter but repeated its refusal to enter any coalition with the AfD. The AfD has likewise ruled out a coalition with the CDU.
As the Associated Press reported through PBS NewsHour, it was not evident how the remaining parties could assemble a stable government without the AfD’s participation.
Voter turnout hit a record 76.5%.
France Calls the Result a Warning Sign
French ministers reacted swiftly on Monday. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told RTL radio the result sent a very worrying signal and described a spreading populist wave that Europe must resist.
French European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad, writing on X, called the far-right prevailing in a German regional election a very grave moment for Europe. He urged humility in listening to public anger while rejecting nationalism and xenophobia as any kind of answer.
Reuters carried both statements.
Saxony-Anhalt in a Wider European Context
The AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt branch is classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. The party has consistently polled roughly double the national average in the eastern state, home to about 1.8 million voters.
Tarik Abou-Chadi, a professor of European politics at Oxford University, cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions.
He noted, as The Guardian reported, that a far-right party winning a regional election in Germany is not inherently more alarming than similar results elsewhere in Europe, pointing out that Saxony-Anhalt is a long-established area of AfD strength.
Still, the AfD leads in national polls and is competitive in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where state elections are scheduled later this month. Sweden holds legislative elections next weekend.
France faces a presidential ballot next spring, with parliamentary elections in Italy, Spain and Poland to follow in the coming year.