Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt with around 44% of the vote, according to exit-poll projections, putting the party on course for its strongest-ever result in the eastern German state.
The result is not expected to give the AfD an outright majority in the state parliament, however, leaving Saxony-Anhalt facing difficult coalition talks and putting Germany’s political firewall against the far right under renewed pressure.
Public broadcasters ARD and ZDF both put the AfD at around 44% of the vote. ZDF projects the party to win 41 of the 97 seats in the state parliament, while ARD puts it at 39, short of the 49 seats needed for a majority.
The result marks a dramatic reversal from the previous election in 2021, when the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won 37.1% and the AfD 20.8%. The CDU, led in Saxony-Anhalt by incumbent premier Sven Schulze, came a distant second on 18.5%, according to both broadcasters.
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Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s 35-year-old lead candidate, hailed the result as historic and said voters had sent an unmistakable signal.
The result puts Siegmund at the centre of the question facing Germany’s mainstream parties: how to govern a state where the AfD has won by a huge margin while maintaining the so-called Brandmauer, the political firewall against cooperation with the far right.
The firewall under pressure
All mainstream parties projected to enter the state parliament have ruled out cooperating with the AfD, meaning the party is unlikely to be able to translate its election victory directly into control of the government.
Siegmund had previously said he would only seek to become state premier if the AfD could form a government on its own.
The CDU will now face the task of assembling a governing majority without the election’s strongest party. Alongside the AfD and CDU, three parties are projected to enter the state parliament: the Left on around 9-9.5%, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on 8-9% and the Greens on around 8.5-9%.
The SPD is currently part of Saxony-Anhalt’s governing coalition and is also a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s federal government. The Free Democrats (FDP), who have been part of Saxony-Anhalt’s governing coalition, are projected to remain below the 5% threshold needed to enter the state parliament. Projections for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) are less clear: ZDF puts the party below the threshold, while ARD has it exactly on 5%, potentially giving it a narrow route into parliament.
Before the election, BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht had not ruled out helping the AfD into government if her party cleared the threshold.
If the projections hold, the CDU could seek to form a government with the SPD and Greens. Such a coalition would nevertheless fall short of a majority and could require support from the Left to pass legislation.
That would present its own political dilemma. The CDU has historically maintained a firewall not only against the AfD but also against the far-left Die Linke. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ruled out coalitions with either party at federal level.
The election therefore leaves the CDU facing the kind of choice it has sought to avoid: finding a way to govern from the centre while two parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum hold the balance of power.
Why the AfD is surging
Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany’s eastern states and was part of communist East Germany until reunification in 1990. Decades of industrial decline, population loss and an exodus of younger residents have left it among Germany’s most economically challenged regions.
The AfD has capitalised on a widespread sense among voters that the region has been left behind.
Election analyst Jens Hönisch of public broadcaster MDR has attributed the party’s rise to economic weakness and declining trust in the federal government. Migration, however, remains one of the AfD’s most effective mobilising issues, despite foreign nationals making up only around 8% of the state’s population.
The party’s election programme also raises questions about what an AfD-led government would mean for the state’s finances. A recent study by the Halle Institute for Economic Research found that implementing the party’s programme could leave Saxony-Anhalt with an annual budget shortfall of at least €2.2 billion. The state already has around €25 billion in debt, among the highest per-capita levels in Germany.
Its restrictive migration policies could also clash with the demographic pressures facing the region, where an ageing and shrinking population has increased the need for workers.
A new face of the German far right
Siegmund’s success also reflects the changing way the AfD campaigns. The 35-year-old has built an unusually large social-media following, with more than 800,000 followers on TikTok, turning him into something closer to a political celebrity than a conventional state-level politician.
His CDU rival, incumbent premier Sven Schulze, has only a fraction of that following. The contrast has helped Siegmund reach voters far beyond the AfD’s traditional political base and made him one of the most recognisable faces of Germany’s far right.
The Saxony-Anhalt branch of the AfD was classified as a “confirmed far-right extremist organisation” by Germany’s domestic intelligence service in 2023 and has remained under heightened surveillance. Yet the party’s electoral support continues to grow. The AfD won 20.8% nationally in Germany’s 2025 federal election and has since overtaken the CDU in some national polling.
That makes Saxony-Anhalt more than a state-level political upset. It is another test of whether Germany’s mainstream parties can contain a far-right party that is increasingly capable of winning elections while remaining outside government.
For the CDU in particular, the result brings the Brandmauer question back to the centre of German politics: how long can a party remain committed to excluding the AfD from power when voters are increasingly giving it the largest share of the vote?
