Merz warns AfD victory 'changes all of Germany' as far-right surges in state election

Friedrich Merz stood before the cameras in Berlin on Monday morning, visibly shaken. The day before, voters in Saxony-Anhalt had delivered what he could only call a catastrophe: the far-right Alternative for Germany, the AfD, had won the state election, and his own Christian Democratic Union had suffered a bitter defeat. Beside him stood Sven Schulze, the state premier who had just lost his job. They had little left to say to each other, but they appeared together anyway, as politicians sometimes do when the ground has shifted beneath them.

Merz did not mince words about what had happened. "Not only did something change in Saxony-Anhalt yesterday," he said, "but throughout all of Germany. It will have repercussions, including on the international stage." He was not speaking in abstractions. The AfD opposes military support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Many of the party's senior figures maintain close relationships with Vladimir Putin's government. For a German chancellor, these facts carry the weight of history and geopolitics both.

What troubled Merz most was not simply the AfD's victory but the broader picture it revealed. Sixty percent of Saxony-Anhalt's voters had chosen parties that, in his assessment, disregard the rule of law in Germany. He was referring not only to the AfD but also to the socialist Left Party and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a splinter group that had broken away from the Left over positions that now aligned it more closely with the far right. Standing at the podium, Merz adopted an almost confrontational tone. "Majorities can change," he acknowledged, "and democrats must always be aware of that and accept it." But then he drew a line. "In our country, these values are not up for debate. Power is granted, not seized. And the minority is not the enemy of the majority." The language was deliberate—historians have long described the Nazi seizure of power as exactly that, a seizure rather than a grant, and Merz's invocation of constitutional principle was sure to dominate discussion in the days ahead.

Yet Merz faced a more immediate and practical crisis. The AfD had fallen just short of an absolute majority in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament. This narrow margin created a dangerous opening. If even a handful of CDU lawmakers in the state broke ranks and voted with the AfD, they could elect Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's top candidate, as head of government. Schulze, standing silently beside Merz, had already blamed the chancellor's unpopular reforms—particularly a sweeping overhaul of Germany's pension system—for his own collapse at the ballot box. The question now was whether Merz could hold his own party together, or whether his position as both party chairman and chancellor would unravel.

Merz gave no indication he would change course. When Lars Klingbeil, the vice chancellor and leader of the Social Democratic Party, had suggested on election night that the government should reconsider its reforms, Merz did not follow. He was determined to press ahead, even as the political ground crumbled beneath him.

Meanwhile, Ulrich Siegmund took the stage at the Federal Press Conference with a very different mood. He was triumphant, even defiant. He thanked the media—sarcastically—for their coverage of the campaign. "It was also thanks to you that we made it," he said, referring to the intense scrutiny and criticism the AfD had faced. Der Spiegel, one of Germany's most influential news magazines, had recently published a cover story calling him "Germany's most dangerous man." Siegmund seemed to view such warnings as validation rather than condemnation. "Never before has there been such a wide gap between those members of the media who seek to dictate to us here in Saxony-Anhalt how we should live and the reality of life for the people in this state," he declared.

But when pressed on whether he had a mandate to form a government—even without an absolute majority, possibly with tacit support from the Wagenknecht Alliance—Siegmund dodged the question. He made clear that he wanted absolute power, not a coalition partnership. He did not have the votes for that. What would happen next remained uncertain, a question that would dominate German politics for weeks to come.