The far right is closer than ever to coming to power in Germany for the first time in democracy. This has been indicated by polls for months, including the latest one, published on Thursday by public television ZDF: AfD would obtain 41% of the votes in Sunday's elections in the State of Saxony-Anhalt. The second force in voting intention would be the CDU, with 23%, 14 points less than what it obtained in the 2021 regional elections.
The Christian Democrats govern in this land, or federal state, in coalition with the SPD and the liberals of the FDP. If the survey is confirmed, AfD would be five percentage points short of the absolute majority, which means that only an entente between the rest of the parties would prevent it from forming a government.
Election night will be heart-stopping because everything will depend on a small margin. AfD will have two options to form a government: if it achieves an absolute majority of deputies or if the nationalist and populist left of BSW enters Parliament. The BSW would touch the 5% threshold required to enter Parliament, according to ZDF. BSW leader Sahra Wagenknecht reiterated this August that, if necessary, her party will study whether to facilitate an AfD government. BSW considers it undemocratic to veto a party that obtains such great support and far above its rivals.
The cordon sanitaire has allowed the AfD to not yet come to power in Germany, something that the rest of the parties consider would be a shock with unforeseeable consequences. The radical formation, founded in 2013, has only won four mayorships in smaller municipalities so far. Its greatest achievement was being the second most voted force in the 2025 federal elections. In the 2024 Thuringia State elections it already managed to be the most voted party with 32% of the votes, but the cordon sanitaire gave the CDU the possibility of forming a minority government with the SPD and BSW.
The coalition of these three parties in Thuringia, the only one in Germany, is going through its most complex moment due to an internal rebellion in BSW. The formation of an alternative government to the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt seems even more difficult, not only because the extreme right would obtain a higher percentage. CDU sources in the country assure that, despite the enormous drop in votes, they believe that their candidate, Sven Schulze, will re-validate the presidency of the federal government. But to do this, they admit, they will depend on something very difficult: that the Christian Democrats and Die Linke reach an agreement.
The chancellor and leader of the CDU himself, Friedrich Merz, assured this week that his party considers the AfD and the left of Die Linke to be equally radical. “Both AfD and Die Linke have such important differences with the CDU that cooperation with them is out of the question,” Merz said in the Mitteldeutschen Zeitung newspaper. Die Linke, which is emerging as the third force in Saxony-Anhalt with a range in the polls of between 11% and 13%, is also not considering agreements with the Christian Democrats, except if it serves to leave the AfD out of power as happened in Thuringia. Schulze, asked about the issue on numerous occasions during the campaign, has limited himself to answering that, if he revalidates the presidency of the State, his Executive will not have representatives from AfD or Die Linke.
