AfD clearly wins ballot box vote in Saxony-Anhalt, postal vote weaker

In the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD performed significantly better in ballot box voting than in postal voting. The preliminary results show that, mathematically, the party would have won an absolute majority of seats in the state parliament without postal voters.

Among voters who cast their votes at the polling stations, the party classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony-Anhalt received 51.2 percent of the vote. In the postal vote, only 24.3 percent of the valid votes went to the AfD. It is on a par with the CDU, which 24.3 percent of postal voters also chose. At the polling stations, however, only 14.5 percent voted for Prime Minister Sven Schulze's party.

Overall, according to the preliminary results, the AfD has 43.8 percent and 39 seats in the new state parliament. 42 seats are necessary for a majority. The CDU fell from 37.1 percent in the 2021 state election to just 17.2 percent.

Before the election and in recent years, AfD politicians have repeatedly, mostly without concrete evidence, expressed doubts about the security and legality of postal voting and called on their supporters to only vote on site. According to election researchers, the party's postal voting results are therefore worse than those from the ballot box. This time, 27.4 percent of voters in Saxony-Anhalt voted by post. In 2021 it was 29.1 percent.