The Alternative for Germany won 43.8 per cent of the party vote in Sunday's state election in Saxony-Anhalt, according to the official count completed early on Monday, more than double the 20.8 per cent it took in 2021 and a record for the party in any state election. The ARD projection gives it 39 of the 83 seats in the Magdeburg parliament, three short of a majority. Every other party that won seats says it will not enter government with it.
The count from all 2,661 polling districts, published by the state statistics office at 5.21am local time, has the Christian Democrats of Chancellor Friedrich Merz at 17.2 per cent, down from 37.1 per cent, after 24 years leading the state. The Social Democrats took 9.3 per cent, the Greens 8.9, the Left 8.6 and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance 5.3, clearing the threshold for seats for the first time. The Free Democrats fell to 2.6 per cent and out of the parliament. Turnout was 77.8 per cent, against 60.3 per cent five years ago.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's 35-year-old lead candidate, claimed the result on Sunday night. "We have achieved exactly what we set out to achieve. We have made history in this country," he said. He said he would talk only to parties that back "a clear change in policy", and if that failed, "there will just be new elections". National co-leader Alice Weidel called it "a very clear mandate to govern" and said the party would "break records throughout eastern Germany and at the federal level as well". Her co-leader Tino Chrupalla said the other parties' refusal to work with the AfD, known in Germany as the firewall, had been "definitively rejected by the voters today".
The Christian Democrats say the wall stands. "I have no intention of working with the AfD," said Sven Schulze, the state premier whose party has just lost more than half its vote. "We're going to have to live with this result." The party's national general secretary, Franziska Hoppermann, said: "We do not work with extremists." The Social Democrats, Greens and Left have the same position.
The arithmetic leaves no comfortable path. The Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Greens together hold 31 seats on the projection, and adding the Left takes them to 39, still short of 42 and dependent on a party the Christian Democrats have also ruled out. The Wagenknecht Alliance's five seats would give the AfD a majority, and the AfD alone would give any other grouping one. If no candidate for premier wins an absolute majority in the first two ballots, the state constitution allows a third ballot decided by a plurality, which the AfD's 39 votes would win unless the other parties unite behind one name.
Germany's domestic intelligence agency classifies the AfD's Saxony-Anhalt branch as a proven right-wing extremist organisation, a finding the party rejects. The campaign platform included what the party called a remigration and deportation offensive against migrants without legal status, removing pride flags from schools in favour of the national flag, reducing the weight given to the Holocaust in the history curriculum, and cash bonuses for births to reverse population decline in a state of 2.1 million people.
Thousands of people protested against the result in Berlin, Frankfurt and Mainz on Sunday, and police in Berlin were expecting about 5,000 at the Brandenburg Gate on Monday evening. Merz had not commented publicly by Monday afternoon Australian time. Siegmund had. "A very good campaigner for us was Friedrich Merz," he said. "Every day this man is in the chancellery is one too many."
The count is complete. The seat distribution will be confirmed when the state returning officer certifies it, and talks on forming a government are expected to begin this week. No party has yet named a candidate for premier other than the AfD.
