The state of Saxony-Anhalt is located in central Germany and has a long tradition. Many of the world-famous architects of the Bauhaus school in Dessau hail from the region of present-day Saxony-Anhalt. In Eisleben, and especially in Wittenberg, the memory of the great reformer Martin Luther is celebrated. It was here that he nailed his famous “95 Theses” to the door of the palace church, sparking the religious reform movement.
The "Chemical Triangle" in Saxony-Anhalt is located around the cities of Luna and Bitterfeld in the east of the state and today still provides around 10,000 jobs. The medium-high Harz mountain range is located in the west. The European Elbe River flows through the state, coming from the east and heading north.
As for the south of the state, it will have to reinvent itself in light of the structural transformation that followed the decision to abandon brown coal. Its unemployment rate is slightly higher than in Germany as a whole.
Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively sparsely populated state with a population of about 2.1 million people. There are only two cities, the state capital, Magdeburg, and Halle, with a population of more than 200,000.
However, in September 2026, international media will turn their attention to this small state in eastern Germany: in Saxony-Anhalt, the candidate of a party classified by the Constitutional Protection Service as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” in some respects may become prime minister for the first time in the history of post-World War II Germany. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, led by its main candidate, Ulrich Zigmund, occupies a clear lead in all opinion polls.
The Alternative for Germany party is leading by a large margin in opinion polls
The AfD party in the state of Saxony-Anhalt received a support rating of 42 percent in a poll conducted by the ARD network about a week before the elections. The conservatives from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who have ruled the state for most of the time since its founding in 1990, are in last place with 22 percent.
The Regional Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the Alternative for Germany party as a “confirmed right-wing extremist,” but this has not yet negatively affected its support ratings among the population. The Left Party has 11 percent in opinion polls, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has 8 percent. It is uncertain whether the Green Party and the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP) will be able to enter the regional parliament again. In the latest opinion poll conducted by the first German television channel ARD, only the Green Party succeeded in entering the state parliament with a support rate of 6 percent.
The words of former CDU Prime Minister Rainer Hasloff sounded like a wake-up call. He announced in the summer of 2025 that he intended to leave the state if the Alternative for Germany party came to power. "I do not want to live in a state where the AfD is in power," Hazelof told the news magazine Spiegel at the time. The Alternative for Germany party so far holds 23 seats out of 97 seats in the regional parliament.
According to Haseloff, he repeatedly felt in the regional parliament in Magdeburg that he was "sitting in the Reichstag during the last phase of the Weimar Republic, or later in the Sports Palace in Berlin."
The Weimar Republic was Germany's first democratic state and ended in 1933 with the Nazis seizing power. At the Sports Palace in Berlin, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, a close associate of Adolf Hitler, declared "total war" in 1943.
In January 2026, Hasloff resigned from office after 15 years, and his successor, Sven Schulz, must now confront the AfD. If he does not succeed in this, a long era of regional governments led by the Christian Democratic Party will end in September. More recently the Conservatives have been governing jointly with the Social Democrats and the Liberal Democratic Party.
The 1994 experience: a minority government
From 1994 to 2002 the state of Saxony-Anhalt had made political headlines before: in July 1994 the social democrat Reinhard Hübner, who has since died, and the Green Party formed a minority government that was tolerated by the Social Democratic Party, the successor party to the Social Unified Party that ruled the German Democratic Republic.
Cooperation with the heirs of the ruling party in the German Democratic Republic only five years after the fall of the wall separating the two German states: this was considered throughout the country, especially by conservatives, as a violation of the taboo.
1998: Success of the far-right Popular Union Party
Later, until May 2002, Hübner ruled alone without the Green Party, again relying on the votes of the Social Democratic Party. Soon talk began about the "Magdeburg model": the Social Democratic Party and later its successor, the Left Party, participated in assuming governance responsibilities in other federal states as well. It was the state of Saxony-Anhalt that started it.
The propensity to vote for extremist parties in Saxony-Anhalt has been higher than in other regions of the country since earlier: in 1998, the German People's Union, classified as a far-right party, entered the regional parliament by 12.9 percent. However, this group, which was suffering from severe divisions, refrained from running again in the 2002 state elections.
How will the Alternative Party change the state?
Experts attribute the high results achieved by the AfD in today's opinion polls to the great dissatisfaction felt by many residents of Saxony-Anhalt towards the current situation in Germany. After reunification in 1989 many lost their jobs either in open pit brown coal mines or in the chemical industry.
Many young people left the country and did not return. A large number of residents oppose continued immigration, even though the percentage of foreigners in the total population, which ranges between 8 and 9 percent, is well below the federal average.
Many observers believe that the example of the German People's Union Party about 25 years ago shows that far-right groups in the state of Saxony-Anhalt have long had an established electoral base that supports the current AfD, regardless of their electoral programs.
Political science expert Benjamin Hone from Chemnitz University in Saxony told Deutschlandfunk radio that he expects the AfD to plan to restructure the constitutional system if it takes power in Saxony-Anhalt. Liberal norms based on the rule of law are set to be systematically undermined: “I think the AfD is monitoring the situation in the USA very closely at the moment.” In the United States, President Donald Trump's government is following a similar path.
But Hunh believes that such extremist programs are difficult to implement in just one state: “It is not possible to turn the scales around in just one state and then everything will go according to the far-right scenario.”
It seems certain: on September 6, the eyes of many people in Europe and elsewhere in the world will be on this small state in central Germany.
Prepared in Arabic by: M.A.M
