The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) won Sunday's elections (6th) in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, with around 44% of the votes, but failed to secure an absolute majority in the regional parliament. The result represents the AfD's best performance in a state election and leaves the party three seats short of an absolute majority, in a scenario that could hinder the formation of a stable government. Voter turnout stood at 75.5%.
The AfD's candidate for minister-president, Ulrich Siegmund, called the result historic and said the party received a mandate to govern. Co-leader Alice Weidel expressed confidence in Siegmund's future leadership, while Tino Chrupalla pointed to the party's ambition to take on governing responsibilities at the federal level after the 2029 federal elections. All other political forces had ruled out a coalition with the AfD before the elections, which is classified by that state's domestic intelligence services as a confirmed far-right formation.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, suffered a heavy defeat, obtaining around 17% of the votes, against 37.1% in 2021, when it had won the state elections. The state minister-president, Sven Schulze, acknowledged the scale of the defeat and admitted that the AfD had become the main political force in the regional parliament. The defeat also constitutes a setback for Friedrich Merz, at a time when the AfD seeks to transform its growing presence in eastern Germany into a power alternative at the national level.
Among the possible scenarios are a broad coalition between several parties or a minority government. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), pro-Russia, narrowly crossed the 5% threshold and could take a decisive position in the negotiations. The need to bring together ideologically distant formations, including the CDU and The Left, is expected to make the negotiations particularly difficult. The result gains even greater significance given that no far-right party has come to power in a German state since the end of World War II in 1945.
