AfD Surges to Historic Victory in German State Election, Threatening Merz's Coalition

Friedrich Merz woke to a political earthquake on Sunday. His center-right Christian Democratic Union, which had governed the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt for a quarter-century, had been decimated. The far-right Alternative for Germany party—the AfD—had surged to just over 44 percent of the vote in the regional election, more than doubling its performance from five years earlier. Merz's own party had collapsed to 18 percent, shedding roughly half its support in a state of 2.1 million people west of Berlin.

The numbers told a story of seismic political realignment. The Left Party, Social Democrats, and Greens each hovered around 9 percent. The BSW party appeared to fall short of the 5 percent threshold needed for parliamentary representation. What mattered most, though, was what came next: whether the AfD could claim enough seats to form a government on its own, or whether it would need coalition partners willing to break the so-called firewall—the long-standing refusal of mainstream parties to govern alongside it.

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's 35-year-old anti-migration candidate for governor, declared victory in terms that left no ambiguity about his party's ambitions. "We have written history," he told public broadcaster ARD. He framed the result as a message from voters that "things cannot carry on like this," and he made clear the signal was aimed not just at Saxony-Anhalt but at Berlin itself. He then turned his fire on Merz directly: "A very good campaigner for us in this election campaign was Friedrich Merz. Every day this man is in the chancellery is one too many." The unpopularity of the national government had become a weapon in the AfD's hands.

Siegmund's platform left little room for interpretation. He promised "a deportation offensive" and wanted to end incentives that drew immigrants to Germany, framing them as people seeking to "exploit our social system." He also planned to initiate proceedings to pull Saxony-Anhalt from the regional public broadcaster, citing allegations of "disinformation." The AfD as a whole promoted what it called "remigration"—a euphemism for mass deportation of immigrants. The party's regional branch in Saxony-Anhalt had been classified by Germany's domestic intelligence agency as a confirmed right-wing extremist group, citing members' disparagement of migrants from Muslim countries among other concerns.

Franziska Hoppermann, the national general-secretary of Merz's CDU, drew a sharp line in response. "AfD is a right-wing extremist party," she said. "It wants to leave the euro; that would be economic downfall. It works closely together with Russia. It wants a completely different social model. We will not work with them." The statement was a reaffirmation of the firewall, but it could not undo the mathematics of the election.

The result represented the AfD's most significant achievement in its 13-year history. Modern Germany had never had a far-right or right-wing populist party leading a national government, a state government, or a major city. That record now hung in the balance. The AfD was already the largest opposition party in Germany's national parliament and had its deepest roots in the formerly communist and economically weaker eastern regions. Saxony-Anhalt sat squarely in that geography.

The election had unfolded against a backdrop of public frustration with the national government's inability to revive the country's sluggish economy. Voters had not been convinced that Merz's administration had a credible plan to restore growth. The AfD had channeled that discontent into a campaign centered on immigration and national sovereignty, messages that resonated most powerfully in the east.

What remained unclear was whether the AfD's projected vote share would translate into an absolute majority of seats in the state legislature—the threshold it needed to govern without partners. Projections based on exit polls and partial counting suggested it was marginally short of that goal, but the final count could shift the outcome. If the AfD fell just shy, it would face the challenge of finding coalition partners willing to defy the firewall. If it secured a majority, it would have achieved something no far-right party in Germany had accomplished since the end of World War II in 1945. Either way, the political landscape had moved.