AfD Falls Just Short of Outright Majority After Historic Win in German State Vote

The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won the largest vote share any of its state branches has ever recorded on Sunday, taking 44.71 percent of the ballot in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and coming within three seats of an outright parliamentary majority. It is the closest the party has come anywhere in Germany to governing a state on its own, and it delivered a severe setback to Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union, whose vote collapsed to less than half of what it won five years ago.

Turnout in the state of roughly 2 million people reached 78 percent, up sharply from 60 percent in the last state election in 2021, according to figures published by Saxony-Anhalt's official election-results portal. With 95.1 percent of precincts counted, the AfD's tally translated into 39 of the 83 seats in the Landtag, the state parliament in Magdeburg — a gain of 16 seats that leaves the party three short of the 42 needed to govern alone.

A Landslide, and a Collapse

The Christian Democratic Union, which had led the outgoing state government, took just 16.86 percent, down from 37.1 percent in 2021, shedding 24 seats to finish with 16. The Left party won 8.40 percent and 8 seats, the Social Democrats 9.09 percent and 8 seats, and the Greens 8.85 percent and 8 seats. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a leftist, Russia-friendly party contesting its first Saxony-Anhalt election, cleared the 5 percent threshold with 5.22 percent and 4 seats. The pro-business Free Democrats, part of the outgoing coalition, fell to 2.54 percent and lost all of their seats. Full certified results are being compiled by the state's statistical office, which oversees the count.

The scale of the swing is without precedent in a German state election: a party the domestic intelligence service has designated a confirmed right-wing extremist organization in Saxony-Anhalt more than doubled its 2021 showing of 20.8 percent, while the party that had governed the state for a decade lost more than half its support in a single election cycle.

How the AfD Got This Close

Saxony-Anhalt has been fertile ground for the AfD since the party's founding, reflecting a broader pattern across the formerly communist east: lower wages, an aging and shrinking population, and lingering resentment over the pace and terms of reunification since 1989 have fed support for a party that blends anti-immigration policy with grievance politics aimed at Berlin. The state's domestic-intelligence agency classified the AfD's regional branch as "confirmed right-wing extremist" in 2023, a designation the party is contesting in court, citing among other things its rhetoric against migrants and Muslims.

Nationally, the result lands as another blow to Merz, whose federal coalition government has struggled to revive growth in Europe's largest economy and whose own approval has slid over the past year. Sunday's vote follows a string of state and European elections in which the AfD has steadily gained ground in the east, including strong showings in Thuringia and Saxony in 2024. Every other major party in Saxony-Anhalt — the CDU, SPD, Greens, Left and, for now, the BSW's mainstream wing — maintains what German politics calls the "firewall," a pledge never to form a coalition with the AfD, a policy adopted nationwide after the party's founding in 2013 in response to its early leaders' rhetoric.

Who Is Affected

The immediate stakes fall on Saxony-Anhalt's roughly 2.1 million residents, who now face weeks of uncertain coalition bargaining before a new government can be seated, and on the state's minority and Jewish communities, who have voiced alarm over an AfD campaign that included pledges to remove LGBTQ symbols from schools and reduce the emphasis on the Holocaust in history curricula. Beyond the state's borders, the result reverberates through national politics: it further weakens Merz's standing within his own party and hands the AfD fresh momentum ahead of future state contests, while testing whether the firewall consensus among mainstream parties can hold as the AfD's vote share approaches a majority threshold on its own.

Sven Schulze, the CDU state premier, who took office only in January, called the outcome "a severe blow" but said he would remain in place as a caretaker leader while parties attempt to assemble a coalition capable of excluding the AfD from power — an arithmetic challenge given how few seats the mainstream parties now hold between them.

The Reaction

AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund declared victory in stark terms, telling supporters "we have made history today," while national AfD co-leader Alice Weidel called the result a "very clear mandate to govern" in the state. The party's platform this cycle centered on what Siegmund termed a "remigration and deportation offensive" against irregular migrants, a proposal the German Economic Institute has separately warned would be economically damaging for a state already contending with labor shortages.

The response from Germany's Jewish community was pointed. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the scale of support for a party under extremist classification left him shaken.

"I am personally appalled by this election result," Schuster said, adding that a party officially classified as reliably right-extremist had come within reach of governing a German state alone for the first time since the Second World War.

What Happens Next

With no path to a majority on its own, the AfD's most plausible route to power would require a coalition partner willing to break the firewall — a step no mainstream party has taken at the state level, though BSW leader Sahra Wagenknecht has called publicly for abandoning what she termed "firewall idiocy," a position that has already split her party's ranks in neighboring Thuringia. Absent such a partnership, the CDU, SPD, Greens, Left and BSW would need to assemble an unusually broad multi-party coalition simply to reach the 42 seats required to keep the AfD out of government, a negotiation Schulze and rival leaders are expected to begin in the coming days. The state parliament in Magdeburg must convene to seat the new Landtag and begin the process of electing a minister-president, a vote that could take multiple rounds if no candidate secures a majority. Coverage from NPR, Al Jazeera and France24 noted that however the coalition talks resolve, the result is likely to intensify debate in Berlin over whether the firewall strategy remains viable as the AfD's support climbs toward the majority threshold in more of the country's eastern states.