Merz calls AfD's historic state victory 'shock result we cannot simply move past'

Germany woke to a political earthquake on Monday. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland, a party that has spent years on the margins of respectability, captured 44 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, a state in the former communist east. It was the strongest showing for any far-right party in a German state election since the Nazi period. The result left Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has led the country for just sixteen months, visibly shaken.

Merz stood before cameras and did not hide his distress. He said the party was "deeply shocked" by what had unfolded. The vote, he explained, "will have repercussions" across the country. He noted that the international attention the result had drawn—visible in which world leaders had sent congratulations to the AfD—spoke to the gravity of the moment. Nearly 60 percent of voters had cast ballots for parties that fundamentally questioned Germany's democratic institutions. This was not a result to move past quietly. Merz conceded it was "the most severe election defeat the CDU has suffered in years, indeed in decades." The Christian Democrats, his party, finished nearly 27 points behind the AfD.

Yet Merz refused to step down. When asked directly whether the two remaining state elections scheduled for later in September might be his breaking point, he said giving up was not an option. He acknowledged he needed to do better at explaining his government's rationale to the public, but he would not abandon his post. On the question of Ukraine, he was unequivocal. Despite the clear appetite among eastern German voters for a different course—the AfD and the leftist BSW party, which also cleared the 5 percent threshold, together captured 57.7 percent of the vote on a platform hostile to continued German support for Kyiv—Merz said he would "not deviate by even a millimeter" from his conviction that Germany must defend its freedom against Russia. He conceded he would have to explain this position "much more frequently and much more intensively." But he argued the threat was concrete, not abstract: if Germany stopped supporting Ukraine, things would worsen, not improve. The goal of Russian leadership, he said, was to destabilize the Western value system, and that system was not negotiable.

The AfD's triumph was celebrated by its leaders as a mandate for change. Party chairman Tino Chrupalla said the German public wanted a new direction and was "fed up" with a government that kept "transferring billions of our tax money to Ukraine … instead of using it for our own population." The party claimed a clear mandate to rule in Saxony-Anhalt. If it manages to form a government in the state, it will have broad powers over education, culture, and domestic security. The AfD has promised a remigration and deportation offensive, a ban on rainbow flags in schools, and a halt to new wind farm construction.

The only party that has signaled willingness to work with the AfD is the BSW, which shares its hostility toward mass immigration and its opposition to German support for Ukraine. Both parties characterize sanctions on Russia as economically self-defeating, arguing they deny German businesses access to cheap Russian energy that has long fueled the country's export-driven economy. The CDU's state leader in Saxony-Anhalt said he could not see any of his party's members defecting to the AfD to give it an outright majority, but the political ground has clearly shifted.

Merz's government is also facing pressure from Russia. Moscow ordered the German consulate in St. Petersburg to close by September 18, the same deadline Germany had given to the Russian consulate in Bonn, in retaliation for Germany's decision to formally blame Russia for a recent attempted drone attack on Leipzig airport. Germany's Goethe Institutes in Russia must also close, with staff departing by September 13. The Russian foreign ministry said Germany had provoked a new round of escalation and bore full responsibility for the consequences.

The chancellor's political survival now hinges on the two state elections coming later this month. The AfD's performance in Saxony-Anhalt has demonstrated that the party's appeal extends beyond fringe voters and protest ballots. It has shown that in parts of Germany, particularly the east, a significant portion of the electorate is willing to vote for a party with documented ties to Russia and a platform that fundamentally challenges the post-Cold War order Germany has helped build. Merz's refusal to resign suggests he believes he can weather the storm, but the scale of the defeat and the clarity of the message from voters—that they want a different approach to Ukraine, to Russia, and to immigration—means the coming weeks will test whether his conviction can survive the political arithmetic.