Election in Saxony-Anhalt: Where the past should become the future

The ghosts of yesterday are catching up with the present in Saxony-Anhalt. Travel through a region where decisions are made about more than just a new state parliament.

From ZEIT No. 38/2026

This election campaign tells more about Saxony-Anhalt than any percentage. First of all, the text describes the country as a “here-used-to be country” in which closed cinemas, disappeared work and depopulated places like Wolfen-Nord shape the present, although there are also renovations, investments and economic islands of progress. This creates a political experience of loss in which not only buildings are missing, but also an idea of ​​the future that once seemed possible but never became reality. In the election campaign, the AfD picked up on exactly this feeling, reinterpreted the crisis-ridden 1990s as a time of order and security and presented itself as a force for change with optimism, community offerings and the promise of change. In the end, the author sees not just a nervous election, but a deeper tipping point at which democratic parties, the public and political bonds are eroding and it remains unclear in which direction the country will now change.

An election campaign is like a funnel, a particularly bad funnel. At the top, all the panel discussions, ideas and program drafts come in, all the marketplace discussions, TV duels and also all the time that parties and the public invest in the weeks before election day. And then? Just a few numbers roll out at the bottom, percentages of an election result. In the end, all that remains of a complex, multi-voiced and often tough debate about the future of a country are these numbers. They fit on a post-it and determine all further who-with-who discussions.