The state parliament will be re-elected on Sunday, and the CDU top candidate and his currently most promising opponent from the AfD will meet at midday.
At 1:30 p.m. the top candidates Sven Schulze (CDU) and Ulrich Siegmund (AfD) will face each other again in the election campaign. The duel is organized by the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung (MZ) and the Volksstimme and can be followed online in the live stream. Readers of MZ and Volksstimme were able to send questions to the top candidates in advance.
Last Wednesday, CDU Prime Minister Schulze and his challenger Siegmund met in a TV debate on the MDR program “Fakt ist!” each other. At the beginning of the duel, moderator Gunnar Breske noted that the tone was “very rough”.
“The people you surround yourself with are very dangerous, very extreme people.” (Sven Schulze, CDU).
Schulze's statement that the AfD man Siegmund surrounded himself with "very dangerous" people followed the discussion about the description of politicians as "flat-nose pliers". AfD leader Alice Weidel described the members of the federal government as such. The federal leaders of the parties remained a topic of discussion.
Saxony-Anhalt's Prime Minister Schulze described his opponent Siegmund as Weidel's puppet. But challenger Siegmund may also have hit a sore spot when he asked his counterpart about the unpopular Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU). The debate moved towards more objective topics, especially in the second half. In addition to the economy and education, the controversial topic of migration was also discussed.
Thuringia's Interior Minister Georg Maier (SPD) warns of negative consequences of a possible AfD interior minister in the neighboring state of Saxony-Anhalt. Maier told the editorial network Germany (RND): “If an AfD interior minister were to come into office in Saxony-Anhalt, in my view it would be a blatant security risk for the Federal Republic.”
An interior minister of the party, which is classified as right-wing extremist in some East German federal states, would then have access to highly secret information, “for example in the area of counter-espionage, but also right-wing extremism”. It should therefore be considered to no longer make certain information for these areas available to the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony-Anhalt within the framework of the Federal and State Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
According to a study, xenophobic policies after the state elections could cost the state's economy dearly. Thousands of jobs and added value of up to 3.2 billion euros could be lost, according to a study by the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Halle (IWH).
“A xenophobic policy would significantly worsen the labor shortage in Saxony-Anhalt,” said IWH President Reint Gropp. "If politicians create a mood against immigration, thousands of additional positions will remain unfilled. The country would noticeably lose prosperity."
Opinion polls see the AfD as the strongest party seeking a drastic change of course in migration and asylum policy. According to the researchers' calculations, if the current policy were to continue, the state would already be short of 32,000 employees by the end of the next legislative period in 2031. With an anti-immigrant policy, this gap would grow to 46,000.
Sectors that already have a high proportion of foreigners and a nationwide shortage of skilled workers would be particularly affected. These include food preparation, gastronomy, civil engineering, logistics as well as human and dental medicine. The researchers emphasize that one in five doctors in Saxony-Anhalt already does not have a German passport.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz has rejected speculation that he could be forced out of office by his own party if there is a debacle for the CDU in the upcoming state elections. In an interview with the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung and the Magdeburger Volksstimme, the CDU chairman viewed such statements as an attempt to divide from outside.
“The result of a state election does not endanger the stability of the federal government.” (Friedrich Merz).
When asked whether he was afraid of the speculation about his office, Merz said: "No. There is an attempt from outside to drive a wedge into the Union. The result of a state election does not endanger the stability of the federal government."
Before the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt this Sunday, there is a lot of interest in postal voting. By August 25th, documents had already been issued to around 335,000 of the approximately 1.69 million eligible voters - that corresponds to a share of around 20 percent. That is more than the almost 315,567 people who voted by mail in the state elections five years ago, as the State Statistical Office in Halle announced.
Last week, AfD leader Tino Chrupalla speculated that not everything could be fair when it came to postal voting. State returning officer Christa Dieckmann then rejected speculation that postal voting was unsafe and easily manipulated.
