The regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt granted the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) not only a record result, but also proximity to the absolute majority that the party desires to finally break Germany's democratic "firewall." The result represents an unequivocal triumph for a party that is under surveillance by German intelligence services due to its "undoubted extremism," whose branch in this eastern German state is dominated by its most radical wing close to neo-Nazism.
The AfD's advance exposed the collapse of the German political center, especially of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The cuts to pensions and social benefits pushed by his coalition with the social democrats were received as a slap by citizens not only of that region of the country, but of all of an economically stagnated Germany, where social precariousness is growing.
