Germany's Saxony-Anhalt state election, AfD overwhelming first place... Possibility of forming a coalition government

Exit poll overwhelmingly ranked first... Possibility of taking power depending on the results of a minority party

(Berlin = Yonhap News) Correspondent Gye-yeon Kim = It was predicted that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) would win a landslide victory with nearly half of the votes in the German state legislature election in Saxony-Anhalt held on the 6th (local time).

According to the results of the public ARD broadcasting exit poll released at 6 p.m. on this day, the AfD's expected vote share was 44.5%, far ahead of the centrist conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU, 18.5%), the Left Party (9.5%), the Green Party (9.0%), and the centrist Progressive Social Democratic Party (SPD, 8.0%).

The public broadcaster ZDF also predicted that the AfD would take first place with 44.0% of the votes, beating the CDU (18.5%).

The AfD's expected number of seats is 39 out of 83, which is not enough to form a standalone government. However, unlike other parties such as the CDU, there is a possibility that a coalition government will be formed depending on whether the radical left-wing Saarwagenknecht (BSW), which has expressed solidarity with the AfD, enters the National Assembly.

ARD Broadcasting predicted that BSW would secure 5 seats by securing 5.0% of the votes, while ZDF Broadcasting predicted that the vote rate would be only 4.8%. If BSW enters the National Assembly by exceeding the 5.0% vote rate, which is the minimum standard for seat distribution, the total number of seats with AfD could exceed half.

The AfD, which advocates hard-line policies on immigration and strengthening German national identity, has produced several mayors of small municipalities since its founding in 2013, but has never held power in a state government.

Saxony-Anhalt has a population of 2.12 million and 1.69 million voters, making it the 6th smallest state among Germany's 16 states by population. However, this election attracted attention because of the possibility that a far-right local government would be established for the first time in post-war Germany in over 80 years. As of 4 p.m. on this day, two hours before the end of voting, the voter turnout was 65.3%, already exceeding the final voter turnout of 60.3% during the 2021 state legislative election.