The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) would have achieved a historic victory this Sunday in the elections in the State of Saxony-Anhalt with 44.5% of the votes, according to exit polls published this Sunday by public television ARD. This would give it 39 seats in the regional parliament, when the absolute majority is 42 deputies. According to these preliminary results, the extreme right would have achieved a better result than the polls indicated. Meanwhile, the Christian Democrat CDU formation, led by Chancellor Fiedrich Merz, collapses and would go from 40 to 16 deputies, that is, it obtains half of the votes obtained in the 2021 regional elections.
Only if the nationalist left-wing BSW party enters parliament would the AfD have a chance to govern. BSW is the only party that has distanced itself from the cordon sanitaire against the extreme right and has shown itself willing to facilitate the investiture as president of the AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund. AfD already won the regional elections in the state of Thuringia in 2024, but failed to govern. On this occasion, in Saxony-Anhalt he has for the first time serious opportunities to break the isolation imposed on him by the rest of the parties and take over the reins of the Executive.
The SPD social democrats, government partners, would lose two deputies and go from nine to seven. The third member of the regional Executive, the FDP liberals, would be left out of Parliament.
According to the public television poll, AfD practically doubles the votes compared to 2021, exactly the same as the CDU would lose. The other party that is growing, although not like the far-right party, is the Greens, which would get 9% of the votes and eight deputies, two more than in the last elections.
The outcome of election night can be determined by BSW. The public television poll gives the party led by Sahra Wagenknecht 5% of the votes, the minimum percentage to enter Parliament with five deputies. Wagenknecht has shown her willingness to facilitate Siegmund's investiture in the event that the AfD is the most voted list. “With the AfD we understand each other in many areas,” commented Claudia Wittig, BSW candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, willing to negotiate the investiture if her party enters Parliament. “It would be undemocratic, given the majority they receive, for them not to have the option of governing.”
The exit polls have been carried out by the demoscopy company Infratest Dimap based on 20,000 interviews, as reported by public television.
If the AfD does not obtain an absolute majority of deputies and BSW does not enter parliament, it is likely that an alliance of the rest of the parties will support the CDU candidate, Sven Schulze, to revalidate his presidency of the state.
Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD, has stated on public television that if the Christian Democrats keep the cordon sanitaire in place “and continue to make agreements with the left, they will never win elections in Germany again.” Franziska Hoppermann, general secretary of the CDU, replied to Weidel that her party “will not agree with extremists, not even right-wing extremists.”
But the results are a disaster for the CDU, as admitted by Schulze, who has already congratulated Siegmund on the victory. Merz will continue the election night at the party headquarters in Berlin. The chancellor has not participated in the campaign due to the terrible popularity he has in Saxony-Anhalt even among CDU voters, according to polls. Nor have the national leaders of the SPD, partners of the CDU in the federal government, been present in the campaign.
The polling stations closed at six in the afternoon. The importance of the day has been evident with the participation data. At four in the afternoon, 65% of the 1.6 million people called to the polls had already voted, that is, above the total that voted in the last regional elections, 60.3%. The highest turnout in a regional election in Saxony-Anhalt was 71.5% in 1998.
The support for the AfD shown in the polls is also at a record level. Chancellor Helmut Kohl's CDU held it until today, after having achieved 39% support in this land in 1990, the year of German reunification. The results would be even more surprising at a time when the distribution of the vote between parties is greater now than in those years.
Election day has passed without reported incidents, with a huge police presence since Saturday in the state capital, Magdeburg. Law enforcement forces from other regions of Germany have also settled in the city to avoid potential altercations. A demonstration by anti-AfD organizations was held on Saturday, bringing together around 15,000 people, according to the organisers. The organizers of this protest have called on citizens again this Sunday to continue the electoral afternoon and night.
AfD has called on its followers to go to the polling stations to monitor the vote counting. In Germany it is possible for any identified citizen to be present at the count. The extreme right has questioned the electoral system in recent weeks, as part of its strategy to question the democratic system.
“We have to change now or never, this country is going to ruin,” said Birgit, a 67-year-old woman who voted for the AfD at a polling station in Magdeburg. Both she and her husband did not want their last name to be published. Both assure that they would vote for the CSU, the Bavarian Social Christians, "but since they are not present in Saxony-Anhalt, we opted for AfD." There are two reasons, as they explain, to justify their vote. The first is that society is increasingly poorer, according to your point of view. “In the German Democratic Republic (GDR) I was able to have five children because of the excellent state assistance network, this is impossible now,” said Birgit, who was a kindergarten teacher. When Germany was reunified, he lost his job and opened a restaurant, until his retirement.
The second reason, Birgit and her husband said, is the excess of foreigners. Saxony-Anhalt has one of the lowest foreign population rates in Germany, 7% of the total compared to the country's average, which is 15%. This has not been a problem for Siegmund who has based a good part of the electoral campaign on promising that he will expel thousands of migrants or that he will eliminate aid for foreigners.
